Elsa of Corona
by butterflydreaming
Summary: Instead of being isolated in her room after the accident with Anna, Elsa is sent away to her aunt & uncle in Corona. While growing up in an environment different from Arendelle, she stays in contact with her sister through letters. Elsa's fate to become The Snow Queen, however, is not easily escaped. [!child and !teen Elsa for the first chapters]
1. Some Distance

Chapter 1: Some Distance **Chapter Text**

"'Elsa is in no way intended to replace your lost Rapunzel,' she says," King Thomas of Corona struggled for air on the name of his daughter, the princess who had been stolen out of her cradle. She had been missing for so many years, but the loss was as fresh as that first morning when she was discovered gone.

Queen Primrose took the letter out of her husband's hand before he crumpled it too much to read. The letter had arrived with the merchant ship from Arendelle. The little white-haired girl standing forlorn before them had arrived with the letter.

Primrose reread the handwriting of the Queen Genevieve of Arendelle, Thomas's sister. The queen of Arendelle had written in a tidy, restrained hand. Primrose wondered how her sister-in-law had been able to keep her hand steady while writing such a ghastly letter.

_To His Highness, King Thomas of Corona_

_My dear brother,_

_A time has come when I must call on you for the favor you once promised to me. I am sending you the princess, your goddaughter, my eldest child Elsa. I am sending her into your keeping, for the time being._

_As you bereft of your own daughter, I feel that she would be a comfort to you and Queen Primrose. She is a quiet and obedient girl. Elsa will benefit from time spent in Corona, learning of her cousin country. I recall our days as children, the excellent education we were given, and the happiness of Corona's temperate climate. These will all be a great benefit to Elsa._

_There was some small difficulty with Elsa and my younger child, Anna, this winter, and Marius and I feel that a separation of the sisters is the most sensible course for the well being of all._

_Elsa is in no way intended to replace your lost Rapunzel. I pray your nightmare may pass and that may Rapunzel be returned to you soon._

_With blessings,_

_Genevieve of Arendelle_

Queen Primrose looked little Elsa over. It wasn't enough comfort to the girl that the monarchs of Corona had received her in the cozier surroundings of the solarium, instead of the formal audience chamber. The poor child was a pale wisp, standing in the sunlight of the window with a look that said she would prefer the anonymity of shadows.

King Thomas pounded his fist on the carved arm of his chair with sudden, loud vigor. "Unconscionable!" he cursed.

Elsa's bright blue eyes grew wide and she shrunk further into herself.

"How could they send a child on a sea voyage alone! And send her to foster here, with no warning!"

"Thomas, you're scaring the girl," Primrose scolded softly. She put the letter down on a table and moved toward the princess of Arendelle. "Elsa, child," she said, reaching toward the princess. She stopped when Elsa stepped back to avoid being touched. "Oh." She cast a look at her husband. He was fuming still, though silently now. Primrose felt some of the same anger that she imagined Thomas was feeling, but she saved it to vent later in privacy with her husband. "Elsa, why don't you come with me? We'll choose a room for you."

She had never seen the child before today except in one of the paintings sent to hang in the castle's halls. King Marius was fair with golden hair, but his eldest daughter's hair and complexion were as white as new milk. As Primrose led the young princess toward the castle's sleeping chambers, she sneaked glances at the girl.

The girl followed after Primrose down the corridor like a petite ghost. Elsa was nearly the same age as Rapunzel. The princess of Arendelle had been born the summer after the princess of Corona was abducted, only a month after Rapunzel's first birthday. The birth of his niece had been a difficult visit to Arendelle for King Thomas. Primrose had remained behind in Corona, the sensible thing to do, so that one of them would be present if the searchers had found princess Rapunzel.

"Here, this one is not far from my own bedroom." Primrose directed Elsa toward one of the rooms ever ready for guests. This one had a beautiful view of the calm bay and of morning sun, which Primrose thought might cheer the girl during her stay. "What do you think of it?" she asked.

Elsa glided through the doors. She stopped just past the doorway. "Thank you, Your Majesty," she said in a wan voice.

"Are you sure you like this one?" Primrose nudged. "Do you want to see one or two more before you decide?"

"No thank you, Your Majesty."

"Elsa. You may call me Aunt Primrose."

The girl looked at Primrose with eyes that were piercing with sadness. "Thank you, Aunt Primrose," she said. There was no warmth in her small voice.

Primrose refrained from shaking her head in dismay. "You must be quite tired, Elsa. We'll have your luggage brought to your room later. Why don't you rest until dinner is called? Is there anything you would like for now?"

Elsa looked around the room. Her gloved hands clasped together tightly. "I would like to write a letter for my sister," she said, "before the ship leaves. May I have ink and paper?"

"Of course!" Primrose sighed inwardly. "You can write to your sister every week if you like. We have ships sailing north on a schedule."

A glimmer of real gratitude brightened the girl's eyes. "Thank you, Aunt Primrose."

"Your welcome, Elsa," Primrose replied in the gentlest of voice. "I do mean that. You are welcome here in Corona, in my home, with us."

A little while after Queen Primrose left Elsa alone, one of the maids brought a box with writing materials to the room. The letter paper was Queen Primrose's own, watermarked with the Corona sunburst. The ink was walnut brown. The quill was tipped with gold that nearly glowed.

_Dear Anna_, she wrote,

_I have my own room here in Corona Castle. The King and Queen seem nice. I'm so glad to be off the ship! The rooms were tiny. Everything is so weird, here. It's really bright. You would love it, wouldn't you? You always like new things. I hope you can read this writing. I'm trying to make it very small because I don't want to use up too much paper._

_Write back to me before the ship leaves, promise? You can draw me a picture, too, but you have to practice writing. If you send me a letter, it will be almost as good as when we were sharing the same room. I'll write you a letter every week so it will be just like you are here with me_.

Elsa wrote as much as she could on one sheet, in her smallest writing, and sealed it with the smallest drip of sealing wax she could make. She pressed her own ring into the wax.

The King of Corona himself came to call her to dinner. He was her uncle by blood, but she didn't know him at all. She was a little frightened of him. He had a full beard of dark hair.

His eyes were kind, though. They reminded her a little of her father's eyes, even though her father had eyes like the water of the fjords when the sun shined through. King Thomas had mild blue eyes that looked at Elsa with something like the same expression. Her father was afraid of the magic getting out. She wondered what King Thomas was afraid of. The king and queen couldn't know about her ice powers, otherwise they wouldn't have been treating her so nicely, she imagined.

Elsa lay on her back with her eyes on the ceiling, but she wasn't seeing the gilded sunburst painted there. The bed she lay on didn't have a canopy over it to keep out the cold air at night. Elsa was picturing the canopy over her bed at home. She was missing her room and missing her sister, who until recently had shared a room with her. She wondered what Anna was doing and what she had had for dinner.

"Conceal…" Elsa reminded herself, aloud, quietly, "Don't let them know." She held her hands over her head. Her aunt and uncle had not made her remove her gloves at dinner. She was glad for that, but she wiggled her gloves off her fingers, now. Soon her hands were free of the stiff gloves. She held her arms over her head. Her hands looked really pale, she thought, in the moonlight that illuminated the room.

She still had to change into her nightgown, so she climbed down from the bed. She rubbed her bare feet into the coarse wool rug as she crossed. It was itchy and hard, not like the fluffy rug in her room back home. The sheep in Corona probably didn't weren't as fine as the sheep in her country. She guessed that they wouldn't need the same thick, downy coats as the animals that lived in the colder north.

Servants had put away the possessions Elsa brought with her from Arendelle while Elsa had dinner with her aunt and uncle. She felt a little happy, not to have to live out of a trunk, the way it had to be during the sea voyage. All of her clothes were now hanging in the wardrobe or stored in the dresser of polished hardwood.

She picked a soft nightgown and pulled it on in exchange for her dress. The curtains on the window were open, but her window looked out on the placid bay. Elsa moved closer to the window and looked out at the sky. The moon was almost round and still cast bright light on the water. The position of the stars was a little different from home, but the moon shining in the night sky was the same moon that Anna would see if she looked out her window.

Elsa touched the glass of the window. It wasn't cold until her finger touched it. Then a curl of frost formed on the glass. She pulled her touch away quickly.

Her father had said that it would be good for her to learn from Corona. She would be queen of Arendelle someday; the experience would help her to see Arendelle's place in the world. But Elsa knew that she had been sent away to protect her sister. She was even a little bit glad about that. Far away in another kingdom, there was no way she could make a mistake and hurt Anna again. Elsa had been so scared that morning when her magic could have killed Anna. She would go as far away as she had to, whatever it took to keep her out of harm's way.

"Goodnight, Anna," Elsa whispered to the moon. Her breath made more small whorls of frost on the window pane.

She ran to the bed and burrowed under the covers. It was nice to have the curtains open and let the light in.


	2. Like a Fog Has Lifted

A maid screamed. Elsa came wide awake. She tried to hide under the covers. Sunlight was now pouring in through the open curtains, but it was refracted all over the room in broken rainbows.

Her bed now had a canopy of ice. She had made an ice canopy while she was dreaming.

"Oh no oh no oh no oh no…" she whispered under the covers. "No no no no _please I didn't mean it!_" She closed her eyes and pressed her face into the blankets.

The frightened maid must have called the guards, because boots stomped into Elsa's room, making crunching noise as they cracked the film of ice covering the floor. The sound of one pair of heavy shoes, running, stopped right beside her bed.

All at once she was lifted, blankets and all, and carried away in a rush. She heard her uncle's voice booming above her head. His shout vibrated out of his chest and against her body. "Search the grounds! Find out who did this!"

Elsa held her breath, trying to keep the fear inside, but it started to creep out of her hands anyway. She hadn't had time to grab her gloves from the table beside the bed. Ice started to form in the folds of the blankets. "Wait…" she tried to say, but was muffled against her uncle's shoulder as he ran down the corridor.

Her aunt met them when they entered one of the rooms. The king eased Elsa gently into a large armchair by a fireplace. He ordered one of the servants to build up the fire.

Queen Primrose fussed over her. "You're ice cold!" she exclaimed. "Thomas, what happened?"

"Her room was covered in ice," King Thomas said all in one breath. "I've roused the guard." Elsa peaked open an eye and saw her uncle shake his head as if he didn't know what else to say.

The queen covered her mouth with her hands. "Oh, Thomas," she whimpered. "This can't be happening."

"We will protect her, Primrose," the king vowed.

The queen dashed tears from her eyes and went back to tending Elsa. She reached for Elsa's hands to chafe them warm.

"No…" Elsa protested, pulling her hands close to her body. The ice was still flowing out of them even though she was trying with all of her might. It kept pushing to explode out. "I need my gloves," she said.

"We need to get her warm," said the king to the queen. He moved away to retrieve something from an adjacent room.

She saw walls of hanging clothes through the doorway. Elsa realized that she must be in their bedroom. The adjacent room was their closet.

The king came back with a sable fur cloak, which he placed over Elsa. The queen wrapped one side of it over Elsa's head, bundling her in. Then she wrapped her arms around Elsa and held her tightly. After a moment, the king did the same. They embraced her together.

"We won't let anything happen to you," the king, her uncle, said.

Elsa heard her father's voice sounding in her head, "_Conceal_, don't feel. _Conceal_, don't feel." It started to speak in the same cadence as her heartbeat. But she was being held, held closely, and she wondered if the heartbeat she felt was her own, or if she was hearing the heartbeats of her uncle and aunt. She listened closely. The sound became a hypnotic beat. On the sea voyage, the waves had whispered against the hull with the same kind of steady rhythm. She knew that every wave put her ever further away from hurting Anna again.

The confession came out of her mouth unbidden. "It was me," she said. They didn't seem to hear her tiny voice. More loudly, she said, "The cold doesn't bother me."

Her uncle lifted his head.

"The cold doesn't bother me," Elsa repeated. "I'll be alright." The ice had stopped pushing. She actually did feel suddenly more calm.

The king and queen looked at each other with expressions of bewilderment. King Thomas stood up.

"I'd like to get dressed now," Elsa requested. "I would like to go back to my room, if I may." When Queen Primrose moved aside, Elsa unburied herself from the fur cloak and her blankets. The queen wrapped her again in just the cloak, for modesty, since Elsa was still in her sleeping gown.

One of the frazzled palace guards stopped at the room's entrance. He spoke when the king motioned permission. In a voice ringing with surprise, he announced that the ice in Elsa's bedroom had disappeared.

It was a few more minutes before they accepted that the perceived danger had passed. When they finally allowed Elsa to return to her room, Queen Primrose stayed with her while she washed up and dressed.

Elsa dressed slowly, thinking about her aunt and uncle's reactions. Queen Primrose was clearly still anxious, and in a way very different from the worry that Elsa would see from her mother and father regarding her. Queen Primrose was alert for renewed trouble coming at Elsa, not coming from Elsa. Elsa thought that she should feel guilty for making them worried. She even considered trying again to tell her aunt the truth. But instead of feeling guilt, she felt something else. She thought it might be relief.

They didn't know. She still had a chance to keep her powers secret.

She finished dressing, and then went with her aunt to breakfast, all the while thinking over what had happened.

"We don't have a tutor for you yet, Elsa, child," Queen Primrose said as the servants took away the breakfast dishes. "I hope that it won't be boring for you to spend today with me."

Elsa was happier with that idea than the prospect of being alone in the unfamiliar castle. She wasn't sure how to respond, so she just said, "Thank you, Aunt Primrose."

The queen smiled. Her gentle smile was a little sad, like a ray of sunlight fighting to break through gray clouds. She rose from her seat. "I like to take a walk after a meal," she said.

Elsa perked up. "I do, too!" she answered. At home in Arendelle, Elsa would go out to the gardens after breakfast, before her lessons, even on the coldest day of winter. She preferred it to being shut up indoor with her tutor droning away.

Elsa was pleased to discover that her aunt walked at a brisk pace but that it was still easy to keep up with her. As they made their way toward the outdoors, Elsa thought about how Anna would love the shining hardwood banister of the grand staircase. She could picture Anna perilously sliding down the spiral. Anna would love everything about the castle's airy, bright interior, except maybe the lack of weird stuff. There were no ancient suits of armor lined up along the hallway, for one thing.

On their way through the castle, the queen slowed only slightly when she gave instruction to various castle staff. She seemed to have something to say to everyone, a word of encouraging praise at the least, and she kept a world of information in her head. Elsa would have compared her to her own mother, but Elsa didn't actually know how her mother spent her day. She didn't get to accompany her, as she was doing now with her aunt.

Queen Primrose continued the athletic pace once they were outside. They walked through the ornamental gardens without lingering over the view. Elsa decided that she would have to come back later to get a better look at the flowering trees. There was no time to admire the bluebells. She had to walk quickly to keep up with her aunt's purposeful stride. Her aunt seemed enthusiastic about getting exercise!

Elsa started cataloging everything that required a closer look. Castle Corona was a lot like Castle Arendelle in some ways, and it was a lot different at the same time. They stopped in at the dairy, where the milk maids made cheese and turned butter while the cows grazed out in the green pastures. The queen made an inspection of the hen house. Elsa noted that chickens in Corona were just as silly-headed as the chickens back home. Then they continued on to the stables.

At the view of a colt being exercised in one of the pens, Elsa slowed down so much that Queen Primrose had to double back for her. The queen stayed with Elsa and let her watch the playful young horse without hurrying the girl on.

The queen confided, "His name is Maximus. He's small now, but he is going to grow into that name perfectly, I've been told."

"I like him," Elsa said.

"He comes from a sturdy bloodline. Maximus is being trained to serve in the royal guard."

"Can I visit him, sometimes?" Elsa asked. She looked at the little gray and felt the universal floaty feeling that little girls inevitably have for horses.

"Yes, of course…" The queen paused in thought. "It might be a good idea to combine his lessons with yours. How well do you ride?"

Elsa didn't know how to answer. She didn't want her aunt to know that she didn't know how to ride a horse. Back home, if they went somewhere, it was in a carriage. "Not very well," she equivocated.

"Oh," said the queen. "Well, we have an excellent riding master, here. We'll get you in shape." She smiled at Elsa, then tipped her head toward Maximus, who was running circles around his trainer. "We all have to start somewhere. Never be shy about learning. The only thing to be ashamed of is willful ignorance in the face of the opportunity to learn." She stepped back from the railing around the horse pen. "Now, shall we continue on? We have a full day today, if we want to allow enough time for shopping this afternoon."

"Shopping?" Elsa asked, bewildered.

"Well, yes. Even if you brought riding clothes with you, I suspect that they will be too warm for our climate. We need to have you measured for a new set, suitable shoes, a swimming suit, and any other clothes you need. I've also scheduled some other merchants to present their wares - study books and writing instruments - I don't mind you using mine, but you really need your own - and of course, we will interview candidates to serve as your instructors…"

Primrose rattled on, enumerating the lessons that Elsa would be expected to take. Elsa listened in stunned silence. She was to have lessons in horsemanship, swords, swimming, archery, and cooking. She would have continuing instruction in weaving, embroidery, and other arts such as painting, music, and dance. There was something called "elocution." Apparently, in Corona she would be expected to study all of the scholarly arts, from astronomy to calculus. Her mind boggled. How was she going to do it all?

As the busy day went on, Elsa's energy flagged, but Queen Primrose bustled through it as if the level of activity was routine. Elsa started to suspect that it _was_ the queen's routine. The queen reviewed petitions from the townsfolk, passing them on to the king once she confirmed that they required his attention. She sat with various councelors and advisers to discuss domestic matters. She spent an hour in the kitchen, inventorying the pantry with Cook to make a list of imported stores that were running low.

Lunch was an informal affair at the home of a relative in the town, yet they were accompanied by half a dozen of the royal guard. Their procession through town created a flurry of interest. Casement windows opened and curious townsfolk peered out of doorways. Queen Primrose kept Elsa closely at her side; the queen affected a casual manner while being protective.

The guards remained outside the townhouse. The hostess, a grandmotherly woman, greeted Primrose without fanfare. The queen introduced Elsa as "the princess of Arendelle," making Elsa feel that she had to be on her absolute best behavior. She stayed quiet and listened to the older women chat about inconsequential things.

"And where is Gerta?" Primrose asked.

"Oh, here somewhere," the woman answered lightly. "She's usually playing in the garden with the neighbor boy, little Kay. They planted a rose bush together. It's their daily joy to water it." She turned to Elsa. "Do you enjoy flowers, my dear girl?"

"Yes, ma'am," Elsa answered.

"I have some rare ones in my garden," the woman replied. "If you care to visit again, I will introduce you to them. The curative properties of flowering plants outnumber the uses for their beauty. "

"It's a wise thing for a queen to know about the potential of flowers," Queen Primrose said in a voice heavy with memory. "Especially the rare ones."

By the end of the week, Elsa had a lot to write about to her sister. She was thrilled that Anna had answered her first letter. She didn't open it until she could be alone in her room.

She used to once in a while think it was cumbersome that Anna tagged around with her everywhere that Elsa went. Now Elsa had at least four palace guards as an entourage any time she left her room, unless she was with Aunt Primrose or Uncle Thomas. She had guards when she went left the castle and went into town, even when her aunt and uncle were with her. They were afraid that whoever caused the ice that first morning would come back for Elsa.

She thought about telling them the truth, but then imagined that those palace guard might stop being for her protection.

Anna had drawn her a picture and written their two names under the figures. In her labored handwriting, she wrote:

_Elsa, I miss you so much! It's sooooo boooooring here without you! No one knows how to build a snowman right and who cares if the snow is almost gone and I still didn't get to build a snowman or anything. Hurry up and learn to be a queen and come back OK bye!_

Elsa smiled while she sat at her desk and wrote out her letter on her new stationary.

_Dear Anna,_

_I had the most amazing week. First of all, I am learning to ride horses. There is one very pretty one that I will be able to ride once he is a little bigger. He is white all over, with a grey nose and grey around his hooves. He loves apples. I have lessons every afternoon._

_Here in Corona, they really like lessons! I have four different teachers, now. I'm learning interesting things, so I guess I don't mind having so many. I made a vase out of clay, I learned how a loom works, and I'm learning to walk across a room with a book on my head._

She was about to continue writing about all the lessons, something she never guessed she would enjoy so much, when she felt the presence of someone standing next to her. She jumped, scooting her chair back and away.

"Hello," the snowman said.

"No, no!" Elsa said in a weak voice. "You can't be here!"

The funny-looking little snowman smiled at her with a crooked, friendly smile. "I'm Olaf. You made me."

"I didn't mean to!" She looked at the door with desperation, wondering if anyone could hear her. "You have to go away!" she ordered in a tense whisper.

"OK," Olaf said. "But I can come back whenever you want."

"No," Elsa denied. She watched Olaf disperse into a snow flurry. She waved her hand at it and the swirling snowflakes disappeared.

"No," she repeated, letting her breath out. "You can't come back. You can't."


	3. Some Company

The school work kept Elsa's from thinking too much about Arendelle, at first. The excitement of her first time away from home kept her mind busy. Everything was unfamiliar in an interesting way. At the end of a day, she could fall asleep fast in her unfamiliar bed because she was tired out.

She wore her gloves to bed every night. She didn't want to accidently allow the ice out again while sleeping. The stiff gloves felt weird with her nightgown, yet still comforting. Their leather smell was a little bit of home.

Then, after the first weeks, she couldn't think about anything _but_ Arendelle. She longed to be home. The unfamiliar in Corona Castle had started to become familiar, but she could only think about how much she missed her old room, the old suits of armor, the portrait covered walls, and the fountain in the courtyard. She ate meals comparing the food to food from home. She missed Anna terribly, and her father and her mother, and she read Anna's weekly letters over and over. Elsa couldn't stop herself from crying on her pillow every night when she tried to sleep.

Aunt Primrose called it "homesickness." She found Elsa sitting at the window in her room after lessons and took her out onto the sunny balcony that had a wide view of the outdoors.

"My first time away from home was when I married your uncle," she told Elsa. "Once the excitement of being a new bride calmed down, I was suddenly sad all the time, and I didn't understand why. Nothing in Corona was quite right. I felt out of place, like a puzzle piece from the wrong picture. I thought I had made a terrible mistake." She soothed Elsa with her calm, honest manner. "But it got better. With time."

"Do you still miss your home?" Elsa asked.

Her aunt replied, "I miss my home country, at times, but Corona is my home now." She moved her gaze out to the town below the castle.

"Arendelle will always be my home," Elsa said.

"Yes it will. You will return to Arendelle. Your sister, however, may be like me, and want to marry someone who lives far away when she grows up."

Elsa didn't like the idea of Anna leaving Arendelle in the least, not even when they were both grown up. Maybe they would both have to marry princes, but not for a long time, and even then, they could all still live in Arendelle Castle. It was a big castle.

Aunt Primrose called her attention back. "Child, do you know what helps make homesickness go away? Making a place, here where you are, that fits you. It turns out that we're not pieces of a puzzle. We're people," she said, leaning down to catch Elsa in a hug, "and people can fit around each other different shapes." She gave Elsa a squeeze, then straightened back up.

Almost as if she could hear Elsa silently asking herself, _How do I do that?_ Aunt Primose continued, "Mother Gartner sent an informal invitation for you to visit her flowers." She took a folded note out of an inside pocket in her dress skirt. She handed the note to Elsa. "Perhaps you can spend some time with her. She is your blood relative, through your uncle, you know. She's expecting you tomorrow afternoon."

The queen of Corona lingered on the balcony after she let her ward return to her chosen solitude. Primrose wanted to make Elsa go out and play in the sun, or go and find some other children and make friends, but she gauged that she could not push her niece into it. Elsa was not, by nature, an excitable little girl. Her current situation made her further subdued. Primrose imagined that Elsa must feel, by being sent away, unwanted by her parents. It was a common feeling of children sent to foster with a relative, though some children embraced the change of families as an adventure.

Elsa didn't seem to have the personality for adventure. Still, Primrose had been pleased to see how well the girl took to the physical challenges of some of her lessons. Elsa was as cute as a fairy in her swimming suit. She had already progressed past the foundation lessons of floating, and if she had been afraid of the pool water, she hadn't betrayed herself.

Primrose approved heartily of exercise. If she herself didn't partake of it regularly, she knew she would be plump. When a food craving overtook her, she couldn't have any mental peace until she satisfied the craving. Exercise helped her, too, to deal with the other, constant craving: the desire to hold her child in her arms.

She knew that after all this time, Rapunzel wouldn't be a baby anymore, but her sweet, golden-haired baby was the child she had known. She felt such an ache to hold her baby. She sometimes wondered if Rapunzel even still lived. In her times of despair, she dreaded that the bones of her child had become ingredients in the witch's potions. Why else would Rapunzel have been stolen, except as revenge?

Mother Gartner had been the one to tell Thomas to look for the golden flower when Primrose had fallen deathly ill. Primrose had been too sick to be part of the decision uproot it and make a curative tea from the whole plant. She might not have tried, because the flower itself had the nature of forbidden sorcery. But Thomas - Thomas never gave up on anything. He put aside the taboo against magic things to gamble for her life. She knew he still believed that their daughter lived and that they would find her, even though at the end of every day, when the searchers came back without news or leads, his heart broke all over again.

Elsa wore a silver and blue dress, laced up the bodice front with ribbons, when she answered the invitation. It was one of her new dresses. The cloth was shiny taffeta with pinstripes in the weave. The aqua blue ribbons were fuzzy velvet. The maids who did her hair coaxed her into allowing some jeweled hairpins in the shape of tiny blue flowers. Six petaled, the jeweled pins twinkled in her white braid like sticky snowflakes.

It was not the custom in Corona for children to wear hats or bonnets. Walking through the town with only the shadows of her ever-present, tall palace guards for shade, Elsa wondered if she was getting freckles from the sun. The sun was very bright.

She wasn't wearing her gloves, either. She couldn't wear them with her fine, new dress. She couldn't wear them most of the time. It was too warm in the castle, for one thing. Also, as soft and well-made as they were, they still restricted her dexterity too much. She couldn't wear them and do handicrafts.

Instead, if she didn't absolutely need her hands to be bare, she would sometimes wear light cotton gloves or lace ones. The lace suited her taffeta dress and gave her some of the protective comfort of her regular ones.

Mother Gartner greeted Elsa's guards with chilled herbal tea, but she didn't allow them inside her house or into the special flower garden. They took their stations outside the front door. She brought Elsa inside.

"Now let me introduce you to the flowers," said the old woman. She led Elsa out a side door and around the house on a pretty path. Elsa's slippers whispered over the moss and flagstone. The path continued through the garden, winding between the lush flower beds. Elsa expected lessons in gardening and and herbal lore, but Mother Gartner left Elsa simply to wander among the flowering plants while Mother Gartner oversaw the makings of lunch.

Petals floated down from the blossoming trees. The petals were as white as snowflakes, and wistfully, Elsa thought about making snow flurries for her and Anna to play in. The breeze in the garden shook the petals loose. Elsa crouched down to smell star-shaped lilies that had just started to open. She slipped off her gloves, then stood up on her toes to try to touch the petals of a deep red camellia with her fingertips.

As she often did, she started composing a letter in her head. _Dear Anna, I spent the afternoon today in the prettiest flower garden. I don't know the names of most of the flowers yet. I'll try to paint them in my next art lesson. Maybe Father and Mother will hang the painting in the gallery. Or at least in your room._

She was having such a lovely time in the garden that she didn't notice the cold aura of her companion until he commented, "This place is so pretty. I could stay here for hours!"

"Olaf!" Elsa exclaimed.

"That's my name," the snowman said. He skipped in a circle around Elsa, taking in the sight of her. "What a pretty dress that is! Are you going to a party? Can I go, too?"

"No, I'm visiting Mother Gartner."

"Who's that?" asked Olaf.

"The lady who made this garden," Elsa answered. "You have to go away," she entreated.

Olaf peered at Elsa with a knowing look. "You don't want me to go away," he said. "I just got here."

Elsa closed her eyes. "No, you really have to go," she insisted. She felt the crystals of ice on the wind that swirled around her. She opened her eyes and stared down at her hands. She knew that making Olaf was wrong, but he felt like something from back home, and she was sorry that he was gone.

She started walking back toward the house when her path was suddenly blocked by a boy, who looked about her age, holding the hand of a girl to drag her along. He stopped abruptly and pointed out Elsa to the younger girl. They all stared at one another.

"It's the queen of the snow bees," said the boy. "Look, she's all white."

"But it's not wintertime. It's spring!" the girl argued. "She'd melt!"

Elsa bristled at being talked about as if she wasn't right there in front of them. "I'm Elsa," she announced, "Princess of Arendelle and a guest of Mother Gartner. Who might you be?"

The other girl answered first. "Oh, you're the princess!" She dipped into a curtsey. "I'm Gerte. And this is Kay."

Kay made an unpracticed bow to Elsa. "But what about the snow bees?" he complained. "I saw them buzzing around you."

"I bet you just saw the apple petals falling," Gerte answered pertly. "Right?" she asked Elsa.

Elsa was spared having to lie by the appearance of Mother Gartner at the window. She peeked out, disappeared back into the house, and then in a few moments was walking down the garden path toward the children. She wore a large sun hat decorated with mixed flowers. She carried a basket over her arm.

"Ah, there you are, Gerte," she said when she walked up. "Hello, Kay. You're welcome to join us all for a sweet."

Gerte tugged on her playfellow's sleeve. "Yes, stay," she cajoled. "Don't go back home just yet."

Kay still stared at Elsa, though he acted as if he was doing so discreetly. "I'd be honored," he said. His delivery was formal and awkward.

"Gerte," the old woman instructed, "take Kay inside. Elsa, stay with me a moment more. I'm cutting some blooms for our table." She shooed the other children up the path. She said to Elsa, "It's early, yet, and many of the garden's best flowers will not show their charms until a later season. Let's see what we can observe, now, that is already blooming."

Mother Gartner spoke in an airy way that implied that everything she said had another layer of meaning. Her pale blue eyes observed Elsa closely.

Elsa felt as if she was the garden, and the old gardener searched _her_ for ready flowers. She folded her hands together and looked down at them.

Her hostess continued, "In tending a garden, the artistry is to know when to cut back and when to let a stem grow." Unlike Aunt Primrose, Mother Gartner moved slowly when she walked. She strolled. "No amount of teaching can give anyone flawless knowledge. Even a lifetime of experience can still leave a body with the wrong answer. Elsa, you are family, so I will tell you a secret: we made a mistake in how we used the magic flower, all those years ago. We were afraid of losing Primrose. She was so very sick." They had finally made their way down the garden to a bed of cheerful daffodils. Mother Gartner stooped over the cup-and-saucer flowers. "Making a tincture drew out all the healing power of the flower. It was very strong medicine. It saved her life, but in doing so, we destroyed the flower completely. We thought there was no time to study it. I think now, a few petals might have sufficed. I could have taken a cutting. We were too afraid." She handed her flower basket for Elsa to hold. "We acted out of fear and paid a terrible price."

Elsa found herself asking, "What happened?"

"Don't you know the story of the lost princess?" Mother Gartner asked. Gently, she began cutting daffodil stems. She placed each flower in the basket with care. "She is your cousin, Rapunzel."

"Please tell me," Elsa asked. "All I know is that she was stolen away."

"Your parents must not have wanted to frighten you with stories of dark magic," said Mother Gartner. "Of sorcery and witches."

Elsa shook her head softly. Her parents would not have brought up the subject of sorcery. They didn't talk about her ice powers. It wasn't sorcery, she told herself. Her father _almost_ talked with her about it, after she hurt Anna, but he didn't call it sorcery. It was her "little problem".

"We all knew that the princess was something special. Her hair grew out as golden as the sunshine. She was the embodiment of Corona. Princess Rapunzel was stolen away by a witch, taken right out of her cradle, from the palace. No one saw an intruder. No one heard a sound. It was dark magic."

"Dark magic," Elsa repeated, feeling light-headed.

"Yes, _dark_ magic," Mother Gartner stressed as she took the flower basket back from Elsa. "Not all magic is used for harm." Again, she pierced Elsa with a look. "The golden flower was light magic. A person who knows how to conjure can use that ability for good, too."

Elsa stared back at the old woman. Did she know? How could she know?

"As I was saying about flowers," Mother Gartner was back to her mild personality. "Caring for a garden isn't about rules and expectations. Living things aren't orderly. To tend a garden well - or to rule a kingdom justly - love is necessary. Love guides the learning."

She started her slow way back toward the house. "Now, shall we go inside and enjoy a snack? I have a box of Turkish delight to share."


	4. A Chance to Change My Lonely World

Meanwhile, back in Arendelle...

Dear Anna!

It feels like summertime already. If it gets any hotter, I think I might melt. Just kidding. I still feel a little embarrassed when wearing my swimming-suit, but now that it is warm enough to swim outdoors, the water is really nice. Even our uncle and aunt like to take a dip. We all go together, along with some of the other children whom I've been getting to know. My guards joke about going swimming with me now that it's so hot in the afternoons. I think that would be really funny.

They are pretty nice. I think I know all of them, now, because they've all taken turns being part of the squad that guards me. It's still strange to have bodyguards all the time. I never see anything bad happen, like thieves or, I don't know, highwaymen? Maybe the bad people stay hiding out in the forest, where I'm not allowed to go. I saw a fight in the marketplace but it stopped as soon as the boys fighting saw the palace guards. All the people in town have work and school. It's almost as nice as Arendelle. So I guess Aunt and Uncle are as good at ruling as Poppa and Mamma.

Everyone is getting ready for the big festival of Corona. It's called the lantern festival. Next month the lanterns get lighted at night, and they fly up into the sky. There will be a big celebration with music, dancing, and special food, I am told.

I wish you could be here with me to see it. I miss you all the time. I miss everyone.

If you were here, I would show you how big Maximus is now! I feel so high up when I ride him. I want to keep riding Maximus, and since he needs to be trained to have his rider fighting with a sword, I am going to learn to use a saber. I will have to ask for lessons.

Little Anna rolled over on her back in the soft grass. She took Elsa's latest letter out of her pocket and read it again. "I want to go to a lantern festival," she told the sky. There was a cloud in the blue above that looked kind of like a boat. She wished it was a magic boat that she could take to Corona to go play with Elsa.

She sat up and looked around. Castle staff passed to and fro along the paths of the garden. Butterflies flittered to and fro among the flowers in the garden. Anna jumped up and ran after the butterflies until they flew too high up. "No fair!" she yelled after them.

Anna went back to her swing and pushed off, kicking her short legs back and forth to get as high as she could. The sky became closer each time, but she still couldn't reach the cloud. She started to feel dizzy, and she started laughing, but she stopped kicking and the swing eventually slowed down. She jumped off while it was still moving.

"Ha!" she said, after landing on the grass without falling. She straightened up from her crouch and dashed away into the trees.

On her way, she picked up a stick and started swinging it back and forth. It was her sword, she pretended. She was going to fight with a sword just like Elsa. She yelled and yelped, swinging and slashing, while she ran all the way back around toward the ice storage house and kitchens.

When a boy her age came up the path, Anna jumped in front of him and brandished her sword. "Halt in the name of the King!" she shouted. "You're under arrest!"

The blond boy's eyes grew big. He hugged the small reindeer that was towing a sled behind him. "We didn't do anything wrong!" he answered Anna.

"State your name!" she commanded.

They boy jumped back from the stick poking the front his shirt. "Kristoff and Sven!"

"I have to lock you up in the dungeons," Anna declared.

He had a conference with the reindeer. "I know, Sven. But she's the princess. We have to do what she says. Oh, you're right." He made an awkward bow to Anna. The reindeer calf lowered his head in a similar bow.

Anna pointed her stick at the reindeer, then again at the boy. She skipped around him and pointed her stick at his back. "To the dungeon, prisoner!"

Little Kristoff marched up the path. When they came to a spot where he path split, he stopped. "Which way do I go," he asked, "um, Your Highness?"

Looking around for a suitable dungeon, Anna pointed to the gazebo. "That way," she indicated.

The gazebo was farther away than Anna had realized, and she was starting to want something to eat. She started thinking about whether cook might give her a pastry or an almond cookie. And now the kitchen was in the opposite direction from where she was taking her prisoner. She looked over her shoulder at the long distance she would have to go back and exhaled a melodramatic sigh.

"Isn't it weird for a princess to take prisoners?" Kristoff asked.

"I'm a princess guard!" Anna answered. She needed a horse, she thought. She wondered a reindeer would be fun to ride. "Can I ride on your reindeer?" she asked.

"Sven is too little to ride," Kristoff replied. "He would have to be big like Bae, his Poppa."

"Can I ride on your sled?"

"It's for ice," the boy said.

"There's no ice on it right now," Anna pointed out. She started using her stick to poke at things on the ground, forgetting that it was her sword. "Aaaand if you give me a ride on your sled," she wheedled, "I'll give you something!"

"Carrots?" he asked. Even Sven looked hopeful at the suggestion.

Anna laughed. Getting carrots would be easier than two cookies. "Maaaaaybeee…" she teased. "I know! I'll race you. Winner gets the prize!" she yelled, already dashing away.

"Come on, Sven!" Kristoff shouted. They chased after Princess Anna.

Anna was fast, but even with the sled bouncing on the path behind them, Sven and Kristoff caught up to her before the herb garden came into view. Little Anna glanced back over her shoulder, giggled wildly, and tried to speed up down the slope heading toward the kitchen. The ribbons on her strawberry blonde braids streamed behind her.

She didn't see the slippery spot on the ground. Running, she planted a foot in the mud. Her forward motion flung her sprawling onto her face.

Slowly, Anna rolled over and sat up. Her cheeks and chin were scratched and covered in dirt. The front of her dress was filthy. One of her scraped knees was bleeding. She started to cry, first in hitching sniffles, then with sobs.

Kristoff offered his hand to help her up. "That looks like it hurts a lot," he said.

Nodding, Anna let him help her to her feet. Kristoff led her to his sled, to sit on instead of the ground. "I have an idea," he said suddenly.

He ran off toward the storage house where the palace kept a wealth of ice brought down from the mountains. Kristoff's father used to be one of the ice harvesters, and the other ice cutters still let little Kristoff go out with them. When he was bigger, he would be able to harvest enough ice so that he and his mother wouldn't be poor, as they had been since his father went away to heaven. They wouldn't have to eat dried codfish all the time. Bae and Sven could have carrots every day.

Kristoff returned to Anna with some ice chipped off a small block he himself had cut. It was already melting when he carefully touched it to her scraped knee. "Is that better?" he asked her.

Her face messy with dirt and streaked with tears, Anna smiled.


	5. Someplace Warm & Sunny

At least once each week, she went with Queen Primrose to Mother Gartner's verdant home to have tea. When they arrived, the neighbor boy Kay was always watching for them from a window of his house. He would waive to catch Elsa's attention but dash away if anyone else noticed. The older women assumed that Gerte and Elsa would become friends and treated them accordingly. Kay was so often around that the three children became playfellows.

In the month of the lantern festival, Corona bustled. The townspeople industriously stockpiled special wares to sell on festival day. Gerte and Kay were put to the same task as every other available hand: shaping and painting the paper lanterns that would be released by the hundreds on the evening Rapunzel's birthday. Elsa made a dozen of them herself, but as a princess and guest of Corona, she was free to use her time as she desired. Her tutors suspended lessons during festival week; she spent a lot of her time exploring the town, observing the preparations until she became tired of the crowds and retreated to one of the quieter areas of Corona Castle.

The snowman, Olaf, kept showing up when she was alone. Everything would be fine, and she would be feeling happy, and then - poof - Olaf would exist. She liked Olaf. Sometimes she wanted to let him stay. But in the end, he had to go. Like all of her ice powers, he had to stay hidden.

Aunt Primrose was right; it did become easier. She still missed Arendelle, but Corona had started to become fun.

For one thing, the palace guards that went with her everywhere were nice. They weren't always the same four. Depending on the time of day, her personal guard might be any combination drawn from the regiment. As time went on with no new instances of threat, the guards relaxed. They became more casual with her. She was, to them, less the foreign princess and more like a little sister.

In the beginning, the guards assigned to her had been exemplary in their vigilance. Elsa felt weird about having their constant company, but she stayed within sight at all times and made it easy for them. Little by little, they became used to the easy assignment. She didn't always have the same guards. It took a few weeks before all combinations exhibited the same relaxed manner. They were friendly enough with her, but she was just a little girl, and not a very interesting one, since she never made any trouble.

Today, she had noticed that none of them were paying any attention to her at all. Which was just how she liked it, but it made her wonder: what would happen if she went out of view?

It was like something her sister would do. One minute, little Anna would be playing in the curtains, and the next minute, she would have vanished from the room completely, somehow having snuck away. It gave the maids fits.

Elsa casually walked toward the shade. She turned the corner, expecting to hear the sound of the guards running to keep her in sight, but when she stopped and checked, none of them had moved.

Appearing suddenly, the way he always did, Olaf asked Elsa, "Do you think they've noticed yet?"

_"Shhh!"_ Elsa scolded. "I'm testing how long I can be gone." She peaked around the corner of the wall. The four guards continued to be distracted. Nils, Karl, and Wendel talked among themselves, and Ambros was lost in thought at the view of the harbor ships.

"They're not paying any attention," Olaf whispered.

Elsa pulled back and turned toward the little snowman. There wasn't much shade from the sun on this side of the wall, and the snowman was already shiny from melting ice crystals. Elsa felt a wayward pang of homesickness for Arendelle's snowcapped horizon. "You're going to melt," she said to him. "It's too sunny outside."

Olaf giggled. "What? Naw, not with you here!" He didn't seem concerned that he was dripping melt water on the paving stones. "You'll fix me right up," he said with a grin.

Elsa clasped her hands together. It was too hot to wear even the little lace gloves anymore, and her hands were bare. "I don't think… I mean, I think I can't."

"You should think you can, instead. It will be a lot easier to do it if you do."

Biting her lip, Elsa took a long look at Olaf. Melt water dripped like perspiration from his bare forehead. He had eyes and a mouth like a real person, but no nose. He was just the snow parts of a snowman, without arms or decoration. He was a person made of snow, and Elsa had learned that she could make him go away, turning him back into snowflakes with her power, yet whenever he came back he was freshly frozen again.

She lifted her hand. She willed him to go away. He turned into a flurry, then disappeared. Not even a trace of dripping showed on the paving.

She peered around the edge of the wall again and saw that her guards were still unconcerned and unaware of her absence. She sprinted across the courtyard, squeezed through the tight space between tree trunks in the cypress border, and continued running down the path that led into the apple orchard. The leafy trees no longer had blossoms and didn't yet have ready fruit. Everyone would be in the apricot orchard near the stables, picking ripe apricots as golden as Corona's emblem to turn into filling for buttery tarts.

She walked around collecting twigs, palm sized stones from a pebble border, and two skinny branches shed from the trees that would work for arms. Once she was certain that she was alone, she piled them up and stepped back. "Come on, Olaf," she whispered, deliberately willing the snowman into being for the first time.

"Alright! Arms!" he exclaimed.

"Hush! Someone might hear you!" Elsa worried.

Olaf wiggled his new eyebrows and used his new stick arms to feel the twigs that made up "hair" on the top of his head. "Hey, buttons!" He hissed in a stage whisper as he touched the stones running down his front. "I guess I'm wearing clothes, now. I never knew I was naked," he mused. "This is the best day, ever. Now I'm perfect!"

"Not quite," Elsa judged. If only she had a carrot, she thought. "And you're still melting. It's nearly summer, Olaf." She reached out toward him, and a little flurry of cold came out of her fingertips. It wrapped around the snowman and froze him back up.

Olaf inhaled loudly. "Ah! That's refreshing."

"You need a nose," Elsa stated. "I have an idea."

"You have good ideas."

The stone birdbath was clean and recently filled. Elsa pushed aside a few leaves and dipped her hands in. She scooped up water in her cupped hands.

Olaf peered at her activity with deep interest. He leaned his face in close to her hands to watch. His mouth hung open with ongoing awe.

With care, Elsa let the water pour out from between her hands in a narrow stream that became a thick icicle as it fell. The frozen water formed an almost conical shape. It was pointed at the tip and wider at the base, a little lumpy and twisted.

"Wow, that's beautiful," Olaf exhaled. "What is it?"

"It's your nose, silly," Elsa laughed. His eyes crossed as she pressed it into the middle of his face. "There."

"Wow," Olaf repeated. "I love it." He looked up at Elsa with melt water forming under his eyes. "You're wonderful, Elsa. There is no one in this world like you."

"Thank you, Olaf," Elsa replied. "There's no one like you, either."

"I know. Isn't that great? I've got an idea! Let's go show Maximus my new look!"

"He wouldn't know your new look from your old look. He's never seen you before," Elsa said. Still, she liked the idea of visiting the young horse. She had not been able to ride him every day, because he was being specially trained to tolerate crowds and other horses in close quarters. All of the senior horses were having a refresher course for the festival.

"I'd love to meet him." Olaf jigged away. He pantomimed sneaking. "Let's go."

For the moment, Elsa forgot to worry about Olaf being seen or her guards looking for her. Caught up in the fun, she cut through the orchard with a dancing step. Olaf followed. The stables were not far from orchards. She was thinking about braiding flowers into Maximus' mane for the festival when a shout made her stop cold.

"Thief!" the voice bellowed again. She recognized the voice as one of the palace guards, though not one of the four in her entourage today. The voice echoed from the other side of the stable block and was coming closer. "Stop, boy!"

An apricot fell from the sky and made Elsa look up. Tracking back to where it had bounced off the stable roof, she saw that a boy of eleven or twelve years scrambled over the precarious footing. One arm kept his balance; the other arm held a lumpy bundle against his chest. He leapt from the edge of the roof to the orchard's stone wall.

He must not have seen Elsa. She hastily jumped out of the way before he bounded off the top of the wall directly onto her. He spared her only a glance before he was back on his feet and running again.

"Uh-oh," Olaf commented.

With a quick gesture, she made Olaf vanish. She took off running after the mysterious boy, all the while hearing the yells of the palace guards catching up. With a hard sprint, she caught up to the boy first. He was heading in a direction without a way out. "No, this way," she gasped, pointing.

The boy disregarded her and kept going in the direction he had chosen. In spite of the fitness she had acquired from her athletic lessons, she had a smaller stride, less stamina, and struggled to keep up. She caught up to him again when he had to stop at the wall. It was high on this side. He couldn't get a foothold on the smooth stone face and couldn't pull himself up with one hand.

"That's what I was trying to tell you," Elsa called to him, gasping. "Go this way. There's a storage house where you can hide."

"No way. That way goes right to the castle," he argued. He eyed the tree closest to the wall. Elsa wondered if he thought he could climb it and jump the fifteen feet across to the top of the wall. Apparently, he came to the same conclusion that she did. Instead, he started running again, this time in the direction Elsa had indicated.

The palace guards were close enough now to see the boy through the trees, and they were running in his direction. With their long adult legs, they would certainly catch him, now. Unless he had some help, Elsa thought. She cringed, at odds with herself even as crouched to touch her hand to the ground. She froze a patch of dirt in the guards' path with a coating of clear ice. The guard in the lead slipped on it. The two guards directly behind him collided with him and each other. While they were distracted, she made her way behind them and hurried back toward the castle.

She saw no sign of the boy, by the storage sheds or anywhere else. She was still looking for him when she almost ran into Ambros.

"Princess Elsa!" he exclaimed. "Your highness." He seemed relieved to have found her. "May I escort you?"

Elsa considered that her guards could find themselves in deep trouble if the guard captain discovered that she had not had their protection for a single minute. She let the guardsman lead her to rejoin the other guards.

To her dismay, the last of the group was busy trying to hold a struggling boy. "Look what I found instead," the guard called out to his fellows. "Looks like we have a thief."

The boy, still trying to break free, exchanged eye contact with Elsa. He had a desperate and frightened look. "He's not a thief!" Elsa lied. "Please let him go, Nils." She forced herself not to squirm under the questioning looks of her guards. "I…" she started. "I gave the apricots to him!" The guards exchanged looks of confusion. Elsa continued, "I told him to pick some for me, and he could have the rest."

"Princess Elsa…" Karl started, clearly uncomfortable questioning her statement.

"Please," Elsa asked again, holding herself like a queen.

Nils released his hold on the boy. The boy took and emboldened posture in spite of his tattered appearance. He was scruffy, but clean. His hair was roughly cut and long, and his clothes were patched and pale from many washings. Yet his brown eyes were bright with intelligence, his skin complexion was good, and he while he was skinny, he didn't look starved.

Elsa stepped closer to him, feeling bold, herself. "Well," she said, "you may go now."

The boy made a sudden, gallant bow to her, holding the stolen apricots stuffing his shirt to keep them from rolling out. With a grin he took one final look at the four palace guards. Then he took off running, out to the lane that led back toward the town.

After Wendel finished given his report, the king of Corona dismissed him from the room with a wordless wave. The abashed guardsman bowed and left the room. King Thomas turned to his queen. "What are you thinking, Primrose?"

Queen Primrose sighed. "What's done is done, I suppose," she answered. "I suspect that the boy is one of the spirited ones at the orphanage. If he is not old enough yet to be placed in a trade, I'll see that the director finds a better outlet for the boy's energy."

"But why, do you imagine," Thomas questioned, "did she protect the rascal? Allow him to run off?"

"I'm trying to understand how our finely trained guards failed to catch an eleven year old orphan boy," Primrose commented. "The inexplicable clumsiness that had them tripping over nothing but their own feet. Maybe Elsa wasn't the only one feeling peculiar sympathy, today."

Thomas leaned back in his chair. "Indeed," he huffed. "We may have inspired a softness toward children."

"The guards are fond of Elsa, aren't they?" Primrose agreed.

"Hmm. Is that seemly?" He considered. "I admit, I like the assurance of our niece being well protected, but I wonder is she should not have a governess instead of a troop of young men hovering around her."

"Well, when you put it that way!" Primrose laughed. She caught her breath at a sudden thought. "Oh, Thomas! Could Elsa have helped that boy because he is… a boy?"

"So young?" asked Thomas, astonished.

Primrose shrugged. "How young is too young to take a fancy? She will have a more serious interest in boys eventually."

King Thomas began shook his head slowly. "I won't hear the end of it from my sister if I let Elsa make an unsuitable match," he chortled. "I guess this means we need to think about finding her a prince. A duke, at the least." He tapped his fingers on the arm of his chair. "Wesselton? He has sons, as I recall, and the union would fortify Arendelle's trade routes."

"Oh, not that old chicken," Queen Primrose objected. "He's looking for any foot in the door. He'd benefit far more than Arendelle." She mused, "How about Southern Isles?

"They are too old," Thomas dismissed.

"There are thirteen of them," countered Primrose. "The youngest is just her age."

"We wouldn't want the youngest. He has no prospects at all. What would Elsa do with a lad like that?" He jumped up out of his chair, pacing. "The advantage would all be his, marrying a queen!"

"Thomas..." Primrose used her voice to sooth his protective agitation. "Elsa won't be queen any time soon, God willing."


	6. Out There Where They Glow

In a splattered smock, Elsa brushed plain white paint over an ugly still life of fruit. The still life painting, a work of her tutor's former student, would be Elsa's canvas once she covered up the earlier image. In a corner of the room, her first oil painting - also a still life of fruit - awaited the same fate.

She was alone in the sunny room that smelled of spirits and oil. Officially, she did not have lessons for another full day. Her painting master had his hands full with the last touches on festival events.

The white paint was nearly out once she had used most of the supply to coat the canvas. She couldn't work on it for several days while it dried, and while she didn't hate her painting lessons, she was happy for the extension the wait would put on her lesson break. Painting just wasn't her interest. She was much more interested in architecture, even though it also required a foundation in drawing. She loved to imagine building grand edifices with winding staircases, vaulted ceilings, and shining towers that scraped the sky.

She cleaned up her tools and hung up her smock. It was possible that the apothecary might be in his shop. She would go into town, she decided, and order more pigment.

Leaving the castle meant finding her aunt or uncle and receiving permission. At breakfast time, they were already embroiled in a full schedule, so they didn't sit for long. Elsa wasn't sure that she would be allowed to go out without an escort, but none of the palace guards were free from other duties to make up her usual entourage. Festivities were already ongoing in the town, and all the guards were needed among the crowds.

She thought over an argument to convince her aunt and uncle that she would be safely watched anyway. She readied her confidence as she walked through Corona Castle in search of the king or queen. It didn't take long to find them, but they were rushing in separate directions, and Elsa had to decide whom to petition. Queen Primrose seemed very busy, so Elsa ran after the king instead.

He saw her and waited for her to catch up to him. To Elsa, it seemed that his pensive frown lightened as she approached.

"Uncle Thomas," she greeted, catching her breath with a large inhalation and matching pace when he moved on. "How are you?"

"As busy as I can make myself," the king replied. "It's a difficult day," he confessed. "Did you want to keep me company? I will be reviewing matters of the kingdom. Dull stuff, but has to be done."

"I was hoping to go into town. May I?" Elsa asked. She hurried on before his answer. "Guards will be on duty at every corner. I will be better guarded than ever, in the marketplace."

King Thomas continued walking but gave her a long look. "I suspect that's true," he answered. "Judging from yesterday." He turned away again in thought. They were about to pass a family portrait in the corridor when he stopped. "Elsa, your aunt and I still have concern about the sorcery that attacked when you first arrived. We need to feel that you are safe here." He turned his gaze from the portrait with a great, sad sigh. "It may be that Corona will never feel safe enough to us, considering…" He didn't finish the thought. "However. For today." He paused. "Stay in public areas within calling distance of the guard. Greet them when you see them and when you leave an area. Stay within the walls, of course, and return to the castle before twilight."

"Thank you, Uncle," said Elsa. To keep her face serious and attentive, she fought back a wide smile.

"Enjoy the festival," he said, looking slightly nervous. "I trust you to be careful."

"I'll be careful," she said. She had the impulse to hug her uncle, so she did, even though on her tip toes she could barely reach his wide waist, and her face squashed against his coat at the hip. He leaned over at the awkward angle and gave her a befuddled squeeze back.

Elsa let herself smile as she walked away. It made her happy to be trusted. She hadn't been bothered by her ice powers going out of control in the longest time. Hadn't she used her powers just a little yesterday, without getting into trouble? The leader of the trolls had said that her power was strong, but she felt stronger.

More importantly, she was free to do what she wanted, all day, with no lessons or studying!

She hopped down the stairs, wending between visitors touring the castle, and made her way out the front doors. She slowed a moment to view the harbor. Below, ships of all sizes filled the seafront. The port was filled with guests from other countries. There was even a ship with visitors from Arendelle, though not Elsa's family. She could have been careful with Anna for one day, she thought. It would have been nice to see her mother and father.

She hurried on. She would send something back from the festival for Anna, she decided. She could look for something good for Anna on her way to get paint pigments.

Elsa waved goodbye to the guard before she left the square. He could not waive back while on duty, of course, but she saw him nod in acknowledgment. A day ago, she would have also gotten a smile. The guards exhibited formality today that made her sure that they had all been reprimanded in response to her personal set of four following her order to let the thief boy go. She was still glad she had done it. He had only been stealing food that the castle had in abundance.

Not that she had thought it through. It just seemed like the right thing at the time, to side with a boy against the adults. She and Anna always covered for each other. Sometimes, they even got away with it.

The apothecary's adult son was tending his old father's shop, but he had nothing to sell to Elsa. "I'm sorry, Your Highness," he apologized. "We always use a lot of paint at this time of year. This morning I sold the last lead white and cadmium yellow pigment I had to a woman who would not take no for an answer." Under his breath, as if Elsa wouldn't hear, he added, "And not only about paint!"

"When will you have more?" Elsa asked. If it was too long, her painting master might send a courier to a neighboring kingdom for it. Still, the nearest kingdom was two days away for a rider, which meant she could still have a four day break from painting.

"A ship will be in in a day or two. I'll make an order to have the pigments and delivered to the castle as soon as we have them ready."

"That will be fine," said Elsa. She decided that she was happy with how her errand had worked out and left the shop satisfied.

The lantern festival drew visitors from far and wide. Farmers shared wagons and filled them with their whole families, from babes-in-arms to toothless grannies. Other, fancier wagons belonged to traveling performers. Elsa watched three different magic shows, listened to a storyteller, and briefly was caught up in a circle dance, but she escaped. She wove through the crowds and bought marvels from the street vendors.

The basket she had on her arm was already stuffed with presents for Anna. Anna was going to love the shadow puppets, cut out of stiff paper glued to sticks, and the tiny dolls made out of dyed string. She even had a lantern to send to her. It wouldn't fly up in the colder air of their kingdom, but Anna could hang it in her room. Elsa also planned to decorate some with the Arendelle crocus, send one to Anna, and launch one herself.

As she made her way toward a vendor hawking flower crowns, she saw someone whom she was sure was the boy from yesterday. She veered around a cluster of laughing children for a better look, ignoring the children's calls out to her to join them in their game. She saw the boy slip around a stall, toward an alley of the market that was out of the line of sight of the guard in this area. Elsa was tempted, but her conscience got the better of her, and she remained within the guard's view and shopped the stalls.

Some time later, as she was on her way back to the castle, she was surprised by a ring of flowers and ribbons dropped on her head. Startled, she looked up to see the thief boy crouched on top of a wall, from which he must have dropped the flower crown on her.

"That's a thank you," he said, "for your help." He looked around, though he must have already known that no guards were witnessing the scene. With a practiced motion, he dropped from the wall to the ground. "You're the borrowed princess, aren't you," he asked.

"I'm Elsa," she answered. "What's your name?"

The boy made another swooping bow, as he had done the day prior, before running off. "My friends call me Flynn Rider," he said, taking casual pose with his back against the wall.

Elsa took the flower circlet off and saw that it was the same as the ones she had seen being sold. "You stole this, didn't you?" she accused.

"It's a gift for you!" Flynn protested. "Don't ask where a gift comes from. Just enjoy it."

"How can I enjoy it if someone else gets hurt?" Elsa argued.

"Well, you can't give it back," Flynn said.

Elsa stared at the floral crown and frowned. She put her arms out straight, pushing the crown into his chest, so he had to take it or let it fall to the ground. "You can give it to someone else. Someone else, at the orphanage," she said.

Flynn gave her a look of speculation. "Who told you about the orphanage?" he asked.

"I was told that you were an orphan," Elsa answered without answering. Queen Primrose had told her. Children who had lost their parents lived in a communal house that was also their school, where they learned to read and write, do arithmetic, cook, and farm. When the orphans became old enough, they were placed into apprenticeships. Queen Primrose had said that when children had such a great misfortune, it was the responsibility of the crown to provide for its youngest subjects.

"I've got to go," Flynn said. He leaped back up to the wall. "I'm not at the orphanage anymore," he said down to Elsa. "No right, no wrong, rules for me." Standing on the wall, he leaned over and dropped the flower crown back on Elsa's head. He ran along the length of the wall, then went over the other side and out of sight.

In the late afternoon, Elsa started writing a letter to her father. She set it aside, after all, deciding to wait until after the lanterns were lighted, so that she could tell him about the celebration. With the time on her hands, she did a bit of sketching. She even tried to draw a picture of Flynn Rider, but she gave up when his nose kept looking weird.

She had given the flower crown to Cook, who had blustered about it wilting in the kitchen's heat even while she was smuggling it into the cool root cellar. The ample woman had been pleased, even if she had been embarrassed to show it.

Elsa had a new dress to wear to dinner. It was a glacial green, with a light blue cape for the cooler night, though to Elsa the night still seemed very warm. The dress was long enough to drag when she walked if she didn't pinch the skirt with her fingertips to lift it off the ground.

Musicians played during dinner, which was a blessing, because neither King Thomas nor Queen Primrose were in their usual spirits. They didn't say more than a few words over the courses of fine food. Near the end of dinner, the king grumbled an apology to Elsa.

"We keep busy on Rapunzel's birthday," he said. "We haven't meant to overlook you, but keeping occupied - well, today my thoughts are with my daughter, and I can think of nothing else but the wish to bring her home. All our agents report in this day." He released a deflating sigh.

"But the last hour before we light the lanterns," Queen Primrose said, "we are left with our thoughts."

"And our hope," Thomas added, though he did not say it with the uplifted tones of optimism.

Primrose agreed. "And our hope, most of all." She took a slow sip from her wine glass. "We do tend to get lost in our thoughts."

Elsa gave her aunt and uncle an encouraging smile. They did not seem to see it. Her aunt's eyes were down-turned, and her uncle's vacant gaze lay on the performing musicians. The remainder of the meal finished in silence, and then the time came for the ceremony of lanterns to begin.

The king and queen of Corona walked out onto the wide balcony of the castle. A servant waited with a single lantern, which he lit and handed into the monarchs' hands. Thomas and Primrose walked together, their fingertips on the lantern together, and softly released it over the balcony edge. On its little current of flame-warmed air, the glowing lantern rose. A whisper of a breeze carried it over the town, toward the sky over the bay.

A crowd of lanterns, released by other castle staff from the courtyards, followed immediately after the single lantern. In time with these lanterns, the townspeople and visitors of Corona sent their glowing lights into the sky. Wave after wave of paper lanterns drifted upward. They traveled across the dark mirror of the bay, and the water reflected the lights like a dream of stars.

In the dark forest beyond Corona, in a tall tower hidden from the world, a little girl leaned on her windowsill and watched glowing lights rise up on the horizon. She had no answer to the riddle of the lights. Someday, she decided that moment, she would find out. When she was grown up like Mother, maybe the world wouldn't be so dangerous for her, and they could go out together. After all, Mother left the tower all the time. Mother was hardly ever home at all, anymore.

"Come away from the window, Rapunzel. You'll catch a cold," Mother Gothel chided.

"If I do, we can sing the song and brush my hair, and I'll be all better," Rapunzel answered.

"Mosquitos will bite you all over your face, and you'll have ugly bumps for the rest of your life," said Mother Gothel in a harder tone. "Come here when I call you. Don't make me ask again." She leaned back against the padded armchair. "Ugh! You make me so tired."

In truth, Gothel was anything but tired. She felt fantastic, as she always did from the restorative magic of her "flower's" golden hair. "Isn't it time for you to go to sleep?"

"May I stay up a little longer, Mother? It is my birthday..." The little girl slouched and made an earnest face.

Another birthday. Gothel was sorry for ever having slipped and revealed even what a birthday was. When the child was younger, suggesting that she might get a gift for her birthday "if she was good" happened as a way to control her the rest of the year. Now that Rapunzel was older - Gothel wasn't sure yet which was worse, a young girl developing a mind of her own, or drooling, grabby baby - they were stuck with the tradition of birthdays and birthday presents.

The girl was biting her lower lip, now, giving Gothel the winsome effect of her wide, green eyes. "Oh, Rapunzel, don't be greedy," Gothel scolded.

"I'm sorry, Mother," Rapunzel answered with revoltingly sincere remorse. "Thank you so much for the paints. I can't wait to used them. I'm very grateful."

Gothel allowed herself a smile as she recalled seducing the young man in the apothecary shop. What a pleasant surprise it had been to find the shopkeeper's attractive son instead of the old stick who owned the shop. It had made the errand so much more pleasurable.

Corona's festival, of course, had been in full bloom. Gothel made a point of slipping in among the crowds to pick up any news, find out if her treasure was still safely hidden. If she had hidden her flower better in the first place, she would still have an actual flower and wouldn't be burdened with Rapunzel. She could never stay very long in Corona. It made her too angry, and anger gave her forehead wrinkles.

Rapunzel upset the cart of Gothel's thoughts. "Do you think that maybe someone will write a book, this year?" Rapunzel asked.

Gothel stared at the girl. "What do you mean?" she asked.

"Well, because books are so rare," the girl replied, "you said, so I thought maybe if someone writes a new one, maybe for my birthday next year-"

"What goes on in that empty head of yours?" Gothel responded. She was going to nip this one in the bud before Rapunzel started reading too much. Books were dangerous. She should know - she was very well read, herself. She would not have been able to stand a child who didn't have the fundamentals of reading and math, but that was as far as it was safe to let it go. "Really, do you think someone can just write a book because they want to?" She pointed to the three texts on the shelf. "Arithmetic and cooking had to be invented to make those!"

"But… someone could think of some new stories…" Rapunzel started.

"There are no new stories," Gothel said, rising from the chair. "Now, aren't you scuttling off to bed?" She considered whether she should return to the little cottage she kept for her sanity, but decided that she could stay the night after all and have Rapunzel let down her hair in the morning. Asking for a book! She'd give the girl some kind of pet, something enchanted to watch over her and keep her mindlessly entertained instead.

"Goodnight, Mother," said Rapunzel. She ran up the stairs to the little loft with her sleeping pallet.

Gothel went to stand at the tower's window, where she leaned one arm against the window frame. As the girl had been doing, she watched the lights streaming into the heavens. They were beginning to blink out, the lantern flames extinguishing when spent or dimming when the lanterns encountered frigid air. It was a cold world. Little flames didn't have enough power against the cold.

Princess Elsa of Arendelle watched until the night was filled with lanterns. The king and queen of Corona, who stood together, watching the lights, did not see her hurry away back to her room.

Elsa had left her specially-painted lantern in her room. She had wanted to see the beginning of the lantern release ceremony before she added in her own. She could not open the window in her room, so she quickly collected the lanterns that she planned to launch and rushed to the first open window that overlooked the bay. She took a lighted candle from a wall sconce. None of the servants were around to assist her with lighting her lanterns.

First, she sent a lantern like the others, one bearing the Corona sunburst, out into the night. It dropped, at first, drifting downward. Then a waft of air sent it spinning into a warmer updraft. She was more careful with the lantern that she had decorated with her family's emblem. She kept her hand under the crocus lantern, to catch it if it did not rise, but it hovered for only a moment before it soared upward. It moved outward and upward, yet it traveled alone. Caught in its own path, it did not join the mass of Corona's lanterns. It moved toward the star-filled sky independent of the others.

When she could no longer see it clearly, she returned to the balcony where King Thomas and Queen Primrose still stood in the same pose, looking over the balcony, as when she left them. Corona's subjects continued to send light into the night sky, as they would continue to do until they exhausted their stockpile of lanterns.

As Elsa watched the beautiful view, she thought about her missing cousin. She wanted to believe, as her uncle did, that Rapunzel was somewhere in the world. Rapunzel must not know that her parents waited and wished her to come home. She was old enough to make her way home if she knew; she was older than Elsa. Elsa imagined being called home. She would rush home without hesitation. No force could keep her away.


	7. That Perfect Girl

Elsa's birthday came and went, as did another and and two more. Gifts from home arrived for her each birthday, and while the presents were always accompanied by a greeting from her father and mother, they were a poor substitute for being with her family. Her letters to Anna and Anna's in return continued faithfully, nevertheless. They sent their words with the weekly ships that sailed between the kingdoms. While the ships had sometimes been delayed by sea conditions, Arenedelle's lively trade kept the merchant ships in top condition. A ship had not been lost between friendly kingdoms for many years.

Seven days was not so far to travel. Elsa sometimes entertained herself by imagining a road over the sea, a path as smooth and even as a frozen pond, over which she could ride Maximus as fast as he could go. He was certainly faster than the sailing ships, and he didn't have to depend on the wind filling his sails.

It was a fantasy that she hated to dispel with the inevitable practical thoughts. On any long trip, she (and Maximus) would need to rest and to eat. They would have to carry enough food for both of them for the entire journey, unless they stopped at port settlements along the way. Trade was by sailing ship precisely because it was the fastest form of travel available. Elsa could never ignore her serious side. Without Anna's contagious mischief, it was less of a side and more of her whole nature.

In Arendelle, Anna grew up trying to match pace with the sister she knew in letters. Because Elsa learned to ride, Anna begged for a horse and riding lessons. Because Elsa studied ancient poetry and literature of the world, Anna sought out Arendelle's record books and discovered the wonderful histories recorded in them. She evesdropped when foreign ministers met with her father; she paid particular attention to visitors to Arendelle from distant countries. If Elsa mentioned, in a letter, learning anything at all, then Anna needed to learn that thing, too. It was a one-sided competition with Anna determined to win the undefined prize of sibling rivalry.

Thus, though the sisters remained miles apart, they grew up with much in common.

Maximus galloped at full speed across a field of long grasses and autumn muck. The neatly groomed knots of his tail and main, too, had slipped out again during the run. His tail streamed out behind him, flying clear of the mud kicked up when he splashed through a puddle.

Elsa's braid had slipped its binding, too. She felt the hairpins fall out after the second time she and Maximus jumped a hedge. Maximus loved to run. Elsa loved to feel the wind blasting across her face as they rode along the bay or through a meadow. Now that Elsa was nearly thirteen, she was sometimes allowed to separate out a measure of privacy from the structured activities of her day.

Meadow gave way to the cover of trees and a return to the forest road. She would have to circle back, soon, to prevent the other riders from concern. Technically, Maximus was on patrol of this section of the woods with his squad. The guard to whom he was officially assigned was used to yielding to the princess, and the guard captain looked the other way where Elsa was concerned. They were all fond of her. The presence of a girl-child in the castle made the kingdom brighter. And if - with the exception of the king and queen - everyone in Corona seemed to forget that Elsa was only temporarily their princess, that was only natural. Their true princess had been missing for too long.

Maximus dropped his speed down to a trot, and then a stop, at Elsa's command. He shook his head, making tack jangle, and turned his neck back as if to give Elsa a look. She leaned forward and patted him on his shoulder. "Time to go back to the plodders, friend," she said to him. "Try not to gloat so much, this time. It's bad manners." Even with her conscience scolding her for running off from the others, she felt prickling of satisfaction. She was a better rider, and Maximus a better horse, than any of the guard. Her aunt and uncle wouldn't let her train with the guard or wear a saber, but she could ride at full speed over uneven terrain, shoot her bow from horseback, and track anything with her equine ally.

But because she was a princess, not a prince - and a fostered princess, at that - she couldn't be in the the guard for her time in Corona. Yet she couldn't bring herself to ask for Maximus outright. He was too valuable in the search for Rapunzel to simply be a girl's pet. A good girl obeyed rules and didn't ask for more than she was given, and Elsa already felt that Uncle Thomas and Aunt Primrose were put upon enough just having her in their household.

Elsa combed her fingers through her hair to tidy it up. She couldn't pin her braid back into a circlet, but she quickly unwove and re-braided her hair into a fresh single braid as Maximus trotted down the road.

When he slowed unexpectedly, she paid more attention to the surroundings. The horse had perked up his ears to listen to something hidden in the trees. Elsa peered into the shadows there, trying to see what had caught Maximus' attention. She slid down out of her saddle and stood beside Maximus, lightly holding his reins while she sought a better look.

They came out of the woods all at once, and from all directions: bandits. Out of the forest shadow a young, muscular man loomed into Elsa's view; she couldn't help shrinking back against Maximus's solid mass. Behind her, a second red-headed man blocked the road, alike enough to the first that Elsa assumed that they must be brothers. Standing ahead in the road, a woman with knotted hair and mean eyes slowly pulled a wicked-looking knife from the motley of her clothes. A swarthy girl and a skinny boy stood along the sides of the road.

After a moment, Elsa recognized the boy. He was taller. He looked hungrier. Still, he was the same orphan boy she had helped, her first summer in Corona. Rider, she remembered. He had said his name was something-Rider. Trying to recall his first name (Jim? Fitz? Something else?) made distracting thoughts in the back of her mind. She saw him crouch down and surreptitiously say something to the small girl with him.

She started to move to remount and run, but the closer bandit dashed forward and grabbed her by the arm. He swiped a meaty hand toward Maximus's bridle, seeking to capture the horse as well, but Maximus reared up with a equine squeal and bounded away. He charged the robbers blocking the road, evaded the robber woman's knife, and fled.

Elsa, suddenly without an ally, stiffened. Her dismay at being abandoned allowed the ruffian to gain a better hold on her. She fought against the grip of his meaty hands on her arm and around her waist as he pulled her against his side. Her back pressed against his thick torso. She kicked at the tree-trunk legs and felt no give in them.

"Stop kicking!" he growled.

The robber woman scuttled up to her. The little robber girl followed at her hems. Rider trailed behind. "How beautiful she is," the woman mused, looking Elsa over with avarice and not lust. "She's as good as a fatted lamb." She squinted at Elsa's face. The little girl tried repeatedly to come closer for a better look, but the woman pushed her roughly back each time. The other red-headed man sauntered up to join the group.

Finally, the robber girl jumped up on the woman's back and bit her on the ear like a wild thing. The woman screeched, "Naughty child!" and began to run around, trying to throw the small child off.

The red-headed men began to laugh. The one holding Elsa guffawed so thoroughly at the scene that his hold on her eased.

Rider also laughed, but Elsa thought there was something theatrical in the way he pointed and slapped his knees. He threw out quips to make the big men laugh more and direct their attention to the robber woman wrestling with her wildcat daughter. Elsa took the opening and wrenched herself out of the ruffian's grip and begin running away.

The men stopped laughing as soon as she started to move. The one that had been holding her lunged at her, though he missed. The other drew a knife and chased Elsa. She sprinted down the road, hindered by clothes made for riding rather than running. She was wary of moving into the cover of trees where she could easily become lost or caught up in undergrowth. She moved fast, but the thickly muscled man pursued her nonetheless with a long stride.

The air temperature dropped. The light breeze blowing through the woods suddenly carried a kiss of winter cold. Elsa eyes teared with fear. She gasped and put in an extra burst of speed when the bandit nearly touched her shoulder.

A scattering of out-of-place snowflakes fluttered over the road. A moment later, a gale like something off the North Mountain of Arendelle shot into the road. It blasted past Elsa and knocked her pursuer off his feet. The wind swirled with hard ice crystals and battered everything in a twenty-foot radius.

Her feet slid on ice that formed under her steps. She slipped and fell, and the paved road crackled as the pounded dirt froze and fractured. The air was full of tiny and sharp sleet. Her hair whipped around her face; it blinded her as much as the windstorm. She scrambled up onto one knee while shielding her face from the icy gale. Immediately, the current shifted away from her face, and she could see. She felt the deep cold around her, but it didn't chill her.

Though the first of the robber brothers was still blinded by the localized ice storm, the second had caught up and now jumped into the twisting ice winds with a bared knife. He threw himself at her. She saw him in time to leap away. She was still slipping on the ice underfoot. It felt like learning to ice skate. With that thought, she became sure-footed, in time to evade the pair of her attackers as they came at her at once. One caught her by her skirts as she ran. He had a firm hold of them, and he pulled Elsa off her feet.

Again he threw himself at her. He intended to pin her down. Elsa threw a hand up in an unconscious warding gesture even as she used the other to try to push off the ground again. Sparkling slivers, like shards of ice, flew out from nothingness with the gesture, a blast of flying blades that cut her captor's face. He roared in pain and surprise, clutching at his eye with his free hand, but he didn't release his grip on the skirt of her riding dress. Elsa yanked on her skirts and stamped the ground as she got to her feet.

Sword-like thorns of ice shot out of the ground. The spikes shredded the cloth of her skirt, cutting her free of the red-headed man's grip. She suddenly had a half-circle wall that protected her. The wall shocked Elsa as much as its sudden appearance astounded her attackers. The wild wind stopped all at once. The menacing quills of ice, ringing Elsa like a vicious tiara, sparked with diamond colors in the sunlight. Gathered near, the rest of the robber band stared at the tableau.

"She'll fetch twice as much!" one of the bandit brothers growled, breaking the silence. He pointed at her with a hand stained with blood from his ruined eye. In his other hand, he held only a fragment of Elsa's skirt. "Conjuror!"

"No!" Elsa denied. Shock was setting in, and she was starting to shake and having trouble thinking.

A vibration of hooves shook the road. "The guard is coming!" the boy thief shouted. "Run!" He grabbed the hand of the robber girl and bolted into the woods, dragging her along. The robber woman had to follow after her daughter.

The red-haired brothers hesitated between choices. The vibration of hooves had become the audible sound of galloping horses, however. With tacit agreement, the also spirited off into the cover of the forest.

Elsa ran toward the sound and away from the ice.

Maximus had not abandoned her to the robbers. He had gone for help and led the guard back to Elsa. When Elsa ran up the road and saw him leading the guard, she succumbed to the tidal wave of her experience and fainted. The guard took her back to the palace immediately.

She was conscious again when they reached the castle. She had to explain what had happened, her tear-stained face and her ruined clothes, to her aunt and uncle while shaking. She tried to keep the story simple, but she had difficulty putting the words together. She wanted to lie down; she wanted to vomit. She wanted to hide in her room so that she could cry.

They let her go, at last. Aunt Primrose called for a medicinal tisane to be brought to Elsa's room while she made to accompany Elsa there. Elsa ran ahead of her aunt and locked the door against the servants. She curled up on her bed with dry crying and panicky sobs. She could still feel ice throbbing in her gut and itching at her fingertips. Frost kept crawling out over her blankets and walls before evaporating in the autumn heat.

It felt like forever before she calmed. She imagined herself among Mother Gartner's flowers, in the cool, sweet-scented garden. It was a peaceful place, and she liked to go there sometimes when she felt overwhelmed, especially when she felt that way for no reason. Even when that boy Kay was there, asking her a million weird questions or trying to get her things she didn't need, the perfume of green things quieted her feelings. Imagining and remembering the garden was almost as good as being there. In fact, it could be better, because in her imaginations she could replace prickly Gerte, who had never warmed to Elsa, with the more pleasant company of Anna. Anna would talk to her like she did in her letters.

"I'm starting a club for people who like dancing," Anna would say. "Kristoff is going to be in it, of course. He doesn't have any dancing shoes, but I told him that's OK. And I'm in it. Oh, I need more people!" she would complain. "You'll join my club, won't you, Elsa?"

"But I don't really like to dance," Elsa would reply to her little sister. And then Anna would pick up some flowers that had fallen off the shrubs and start making patterns on the ground with them.

"But you took all of those dancing lessons! You know how to dance!"

"Those are lessons. I learned the steps and danced with my tutor, but that doesn't mean that I like to dance at balls."

Anna would twirl around in circles, then start waltzing with an imaginary partner. "Come on, Elsa," she would beckon. "I love balls, and ballrooms, and ballgowns. And banquets. With great food. Like lingonberry jam. And chocolate!" She would gesture again for Elsa to join her dancing. "Come on, Elsa!"

Elsa imagined the scene in her mind. She imagined it, and then Olaf the snowman was there, in her mind, dancing with Anna. "I love dancing!" he would shout happily. "Is this the waltz?"

But Anna would still be dancing by herself. Olaf would be reaching out to Elsa, not dancing with Anna. "Come on, Elsa. Let's dance. You dance so beautifully," he would say.

Elsa would give in. She would take his stick hand in hers, and he would put his other stick hand at her waist. Then Olaf would lead, and Elsa would dance, stepping in rhythm with practice and poise, as they waltzed together around the garden. "See, this is nice. Isn't this nice?" Olaf would ask.

"It's nice," Elsa agreed.

She woke up some time later without knowing when she'd fallen asleep. She rubbed at her eyes and clambered off her bed. The ice was gone. She felt tired and wrung out.

Opening her bedroom door, she found a maid sitting outside on a chair borrowed from elsewhere. The maid guarded a tray covered with a white cloth napkin. She stood up with care at the sound of Elsa's door.

"Here's a soothing drink for you, Your Highness," the maid offered.

"You can bring it in," Elsa said. "I'm sorry to keep you outside waiting."

The maid passed through the doorway. "Any of us would wait all day for you, if needed, Your Highness." She folded away the white cloth. On a side table, she arranged a cup and filled it from the teapot. She slipped out of the room with a curtsey.

The lavender and chamomile tisane steamed in the cup. Alongside it was a plate of light food, slices of fruit and bread with walnuts and honey, that Elsa liked. She suspected from the heat of the tea that this was not the first tray sent up to her room. More than one maid had probably sat outside waiting for her this day, and she was glad that she had made a fuss some time ago about servants waiting at her door standing. She needed privacy. It made her nervous to think that someone stood uncomfortably waiting, growing tired because Elsa was having one of her "moments" and couldn't bear even the brief presence of a maid.

Anna would have pestered her regardless. It was one of the few good things about being far away from her sister. Elsa still would have told Anna to go away, if she had been around to rattle her door, but doing so would have hurt. It didn't hurt to tell her aunt and uncle that she wanted solitude. Aunt Primrose and Uncle Thomas seemed to understand about dark moods. They understood them better than Elsa did. She didn't know why; she just sometimes felt unable to do anything normal and needed to be away from everyone.

She sipped the herbal tea that she didn't actually want to drink. Thoughts about the bandits kept creeping forward in her mind. That boy (Flynn! She remembered his name was Flynn Rider!) had helped her, she was sure of it: getting the little robber girl to bite her mother, trying to get everyone distracted by laughing so that she could escape, and finally urging them to run away from the approaching guard and give up on her. But how could he have become a highway bandit? He was a full-fledged thief, now. He may have looked like a boy compared to the brawny red-heads, but he was old enough to be considered a man. Adult thieves got the executioner's axe.

She couldn't eat any more of the food. She blamed herself. Flynn might have been apprenticed and become a blacksmith or a sailor instead of a thief. The bandits he was with now - they were going to kidnap her, or worse, today. Her head hurt. Corona couldn't have highwaymen like that lurking in the woods. Merchants, farmers, tradesmen, and families traveled on that road.

Draining the cup for the calming draught, Elsa put aside the rest of the food and busied herself with fresh clothing. She folded her dirty, damaged riding dress and left it for the maids to repair. She dressed in satin slippers and a clean gown appropriate for an audience with her uncle and aunt. Taking a brush to her platinum hair worked out the tangles and the muck. She finished it into a braid with a ribbon running through it.

She stood in front of the mirror for just a moment to admire the pretty clothes. She loved the light fabrics, the silver and gold threads woven in, and the long, draping styles. She like to dress in new fashions, and she dreamed of dresses made from the fabulous silks imported from distant lands. She hoped that when she returned to Arendelle, she could convince her father to put on a masquerade ball for her coming of age party, for which she would wear some exotic garment encrusted with iridescent sea shell sequins and that trailed yards of diaphanous cloth woven for a princess of Arabia.

She tore herself away from the mirror, but not from her romantic avarice, and headed to see the king and queen of Corona while still daydreaming of beautiful clothes. Her mind was still in the clouds when she reached the door of the room where the monarchs conducted the duller business of running a kingdom. She had a servant announce her, and then she went in turning her thoughts back to the trouble of the bandits.

While she took a chair, Aunt Primrose asked, "Are you feeling a little better, dear child?" She still used the endearment with Elsa, in spite of Elsa's growth.

"Yes, and I'm sorry for running off from you, Aunt," Elsa answered.

"It's fine. You had an upsetting morning."

King Thomas spoke up. "The guards are scouring the woods now, in double forces, for the bandits that tried to rob you," he said. Elsa had only told them that she had been waylaid. She left out most of the details.

"We'll have them by nightfall, if they haven't fled the kingdom. Messengers are on their way to our neighbors with the alert. The usual procedures," he smiled to lighten the mood, "as you have been learning."

Elsa squared her shoulders. "They are more than bandits. They're kidnappers," she began.

"What!" exclaimed Queen Primrose. "Elsa! Why didn't you say so earlier?"

"Elsa…" King Thomas. His eyes looked into hers and made her uncomfortable about looking away. "Tell us more about this."

"There were two men with the robber band. I think they acted on their own," she said, diminishing the role of the robber woman for the sake of her young daughter. "The two men with red hair I told you about. When the robbers stopped me on the road, they didn't only try to grab Maximus. One of the red-haired men held me. When I broke free from him, both men chased me. They talked about the price I would fetch," she finished.

Still aghast, Queen Primrose stared at Elsa, then turned to the king though she still addressed her ward. "You were nearly kidnapped, and you're just telling us now."

"I…" Elsa started. "I'm sorry! I wanted to tell you, now, so that others can be safe on the road…"

The queen did not yield. "Young girls do not travel alone on the King's Road."

King Thomas sighed. "We've indulged you, Elsa, and it put you in severe danger. Neither Primrose nor I have wanted to curb your spirit. However, today has been a needed reminder. You are a girl. You cannot be out riding on your own, without chaperone or guard. It is far too dangerous for such things."

"But I-" Elsa started. Her chest constricted with a wayward feeling of panic.

Primrose suddenly put her hand over her own mouth, covering hitching noises of crying. She was crying. Elsa stared at her, starting to feel a that she was going to cry again, too.

"Oh dear." King Thomas pushed out of his chair and began to pace the room. He cleared his throat. "Elsa, I think it would be best if you ceased riding with the guard. We'll find you a good horse. Another stallion, if you like, but one suited to a princess. A mare would be better." He rambled on. "You could put flowers in her hair. It would be very pretty."

"Give up riding Maximus? No…" Elsa shook her head to deny what she was hearing. "You… can't. You're taking away Maximus?" Her voice broke. Her lip trembled, making it even harder to talk. "I'm sorry I rode ahead!"

"You can still ride on the castle grounds, of course," continued King Thomas. "If a need for travel occurs, you will have appropriate escort."

"But Maximus protected me. He ran to get help. He's so smart!" Elsa begged. "He's the best horse. He's my friend," she finished, her breath failing her. Her plea came out nearly without sound.

"I can't lose another d-" Queen Primrose wept, catching herself before erroneously saying "daughter." "We can't lose you, child," she managed, instead.

King Thomas stopped pacing. He wiped his face with his hand. "Was there something else you needed to tell us about, Elsa?" he changed the subject. They had made their decision.

She had intended to ask them to be merciful on the robber woman, the girl, and Flynn. She shook her head. Right now, she couldn't. She could only think: they were going to take Maximus away.


	8. One thought crystallizes

King Thomas moved to Queen Primrose's side. He placed his hands on her shoulders, a troubled expression on his face. Queen Primrose was struggling to quell her tears.

Still emotionally flailing around the prospect of being separated from Maximus, Elsa only felt worse seeing her aunt so upset. Her aunt and uncle had always been solid and steady, quietly moody sometimes, but never overwrought before. Adults weren't supposed to fall apart.

_Elsa_ was upset, but they weren't offering her any comfort. She watched her aunt lean against her uncle, she saw the way they comforted each other as couple, and felt how she was the one left out. Her aunt and uncle had each other and took care of each other. Elsa didn't belong in that space.

She felt stuck to the chair in which she sat although she wanted to run from the room. It came as a reprieve when her uncle looked her way and made a slight nod toward the door. "If you would, Elsa," he said, a mild request for her to leave them alone.

She slid off the chair and forced herself to move to the door, turn the knob, and pass through to the corridor. Walking felt like swimming through sludge, as if her body had become dense and heavy… no, as if any movement pulled her in several directions at once, all with the same intensity, so that she could hardly move in any one direction at all.

She went back to her room. What else could she do? She had enough sense to know that leaving the castle grounds was the one thing she should not do. What good were her lessons in statesmanship and diplomacy if she wasn't able to apply them now? Corona would continue to be Arendelle's closest ally after she returned home, she told herself. The crown princess of Arendelle needed to be able to put her feelings aside and consider the perspective of opposition.

No matter how short-sighted, or how unfair…

She made herself imagine that her father was watching. She would make him proud. "Conceal, don't feel," that was his advice, the advice of a king, she had come to understand. Keep your feelings at a remove, hide the storms that shake you.

She made it all the way back to her room with her chin up and her posture regal. She didn't run, this time. But when she closed the bedroom door behind her, to her ears the click of the latch was the same sound as a surface of ice cracking under weight.

She swept to her writing desk and gathered up a pile of Anna's recent letters. She sat on the floor where sunlight poured through the beveled glass windows, letters spilled into her lap, and consoled herself reading them.

She thought it was working. Then she realized that she had been staring at the same lines of her sister's chaotic writing:

_Kristoff is my best friend except for you. Kristoff's best friend besides me is Sven, his reindeer. I wish we could spend all our time together. Momma and Poppa gave his mother work here at the castle. That means I get to see him and Sven every day. It makes me so happy! I know that grown-ups don't believe in magic, but sometimes I think it's real. I think magic sent me a friend so I wouldn't cry. It would be too sad that you are so far away if Kristoff wasn't here. I'm so lucky to have Kristoff! And you have Maximus! (I almost forgot how to spell that oops except you write about him all the time so I looked at another letter.)_

Elsa wanted to shed tears, but they would not fall. They stuck inside her, so frozen they were as dry as new snow on the worst nights of January. She bounded up and fumbled at her desk for paper and ink. She had already written a letter to Anna that was on the ship that would leave in the morning, but she could confide in her sister and no one else.

_Oh Anna! _she wrote, her usually well-formed writing turning jagged because of her shaking hand. _They are taking Maximus away! I can't do anything to change their minds! I don't want a different horse. I've told you how wonderful he is. He saved me today from bandits, but they say I wouldn't have gotten into danger if not for Maximus. It's not true. It's not fair!_

The top of the desk crusted with a burst of frost from Elsa's shaking hands. The inkwell fractured from the pressure of the ink within abruptly turning solid. Elsa dropped her pen and shrank back from the growing ice, only to see that she was at the ice's center. She knew what she was, as much as she had denied it when the thief named her. She was a sorceress, a conjuror, a witch, and she had to hide it.

"I have control of it!" she insisted. She clenched her hands into fists, and her nails dug hard into her palms. She opened one hand, willing Olaf into being to prove that she had control.

A blast of snow and wind swirled out from her hand. It knocked over the fire irons as if they were paper. The blast shot around the room and slammed against the windows. The force of it made her jump. "Olaf?" She held both hands out, trying to shape the snow man. The snow flurry wound itself up and slammed again on the windows. The latch rattled open as the casements bounced in their frame.

Starting to take shape, the flurry formed into something much larger than Olaf. For a moment, it was a hollow figure as tall as the room. The wind outlined, instead of a cheerful little snowman, a hulking monster studded with icicles. He opened his mouth in a soundless roar. His arms became briefly solid enough to crash against the rattling windows.

The windows swung outward. The curtains billowed like sails as the monster, turned back to wind and ice and magic, raced out the window.

Elsa dashed to the window. She reached out to call the magic back. She nearly spilled out of the window herself. The magic sped away, wild and free. "No!" she cried after it.

After that, she simply stood at the window, not knowing what to do. She stayed looking out the open window until the end of the replaced the sun in her room with growing shadows.

-o-

The flurry sped across Corona. It was full of kaleidoscoping emotion, and it fought with the sun-warmed native currents as it passed over roofs and walls. When it reached to border of the forest, it dived into the cooler shade of the tree cover. There, it started to take form. It _almost_ had enough power to become a monster, gargantuan and armored in hard ice, but its shape stayed cloudy. It touched down only briefly in corporeal form, but where it stomped, it left enormous tracks on the ground.

Losing cohesion, it swooped onward in the form of a blizzard wind that blew dry snow on a cold current. It raced through the forest. Where it collided with trees, it smashed at the bark with a shape like gauntlets. It ripped through branches and tore at ivy covered boulders. It found a crack in a wall of rock and funneled through it before it blasted out into a hidden glade. In the middle of the glade stood a tower.

Alone in her tower except for her chameleon companion, Rapunzel entertained herself by unraveling a couple of old sweaters that no longer fit her. The arms were too short on one, and if she reached up while wearing the other, her belly button showed. She didn't want to pester Mother Gothel for new clothes _again_.

She left the windows open whenever Mother Gothel was away. The cooler currents of autumn gusted around her tower and spilled forest-scented air in through the windows. Although she never left her tower, she did like to sit out on the windowsill, wrapped up in a sweater, and look at the sky. She was going to use the yarn from the old, too-small sweaters to knit up one new sweater of the right size.

Besides, it gave her something to do, something that used up a lot of time. Time was something Rapunzel had in abundance.

A fast wind chased around her towel, twisting around on itself, and shot in through the window carrying a sharp chill that knifed through the dry scent of autumn leaves. Rapunzel sat up with a gasp when it blasted over her head. Pascal dived under the cover of the unraveling sweater. The wind seemed to do a circuit around the tower's interior before turning back to pass over Rapunzel again. It glazed the walls with white ice.

Another thing Rapunzel had in abundance was her hair. Except for being very long, it usually behaved normally for hair, as far as Rapunzel could tell with her limited knowledge of other people. It only lit up when she sang the magic song for it, usually. But when the icy gust blew over it, it reacted as it were healing an injury.

The wind touched her hair and lifted it; a wave moved along from Rapunzel's shoulders down along the loops of her hair. Her hair lifted and fell. The tower room filled with the golden glow of its light. And the wind, which had come in with fury, calmed to a gentle breeze. It left a scent like the frost that whitened the window sills early on December mornings.

Something sparkled and glittered in the air for a moment before a stranger to Rapunzel appeared. He was short, made of stacked up white lumps, and had a long, pointed nose. Rapunzel, surprised, skittered to her feet. The little stranger gave her an open-mouthed smile of wonder. Then, he bowed.

"Hellllooo there!" he greeted. "Wow, where am I? This place is amazing!" Olaf spun around in place while he took in the round room. The ice crusted on the walls by the wind had disappeared when Olaf formed. Olaf himself was starting to melt.

"Hi!" Rapunzel replied with bewilderment.

"Hi, I'm Olaf," he said. "Whoops! Looks like I'm too far from Elsa!" Olaf began to discorporate faster than he was melting. He waved frantically. "It was nice meeting you! Sorry that I can't stay!"

"I hope we meet again!" Rapunzel called back to the visitor as he vanished. "I'm Rapunzel!" she said, too late. She investigated her tower but could find no trace of the strange magic, no ice or cold spots left behind.

"What do you suppose that was, Pascal?" She leaned out the biggest window and searched outside. Nothing at all was different from any other day. "Could I have… imagined it? Maybe I've been unraveling yarn too long without a break." She stepped onto the windowsill, looped her hair around a beam for safety, and climbed up to the roof. Pascal followed. "What an odd thing to imagine," she commented. The sky was clear. The high hills that surrounded her tower filled her view in a full circle. Spots of tree foliage were turning colors with the season.

"Look at that," she sighed. "I wish I could see a tree up close. At the distance I've calculated for the hillsides, some of those trees must be over a hundred and fifty feet tall. If only the hills didn't block the view! Then I could see the source of those yearly lights." She had not succeeded in distracting herself from her visitor. She replayed the scene in her mind, thinking about the unfamiliar substance of which he had been made. It almost looked like quartz sand, but it stuck together instead of piling into a dune. Something about that tickled her mind.

She swung back down into her tower so that she could consult her book. One of her three precious books was geology, the study of rocks and minerals. Fine quartz could be used in painting, though Rapunzel didn't use it because she painted directly on her walls. Quartz had the largest section in her book. She read through it again slowly, hoping that the tickle would become a theory.

"Maybe it's not this book," she mumbled. In no hurry to do anything else, she carefully re-read through her other books.

It wasn't until she lay down to sleep that night that a connection came to her. The reason she hadn't found anything obvious was that the information came in tiny pieces from each book. In her cookbook, she read a recipe that called for saffron, a spice derived from a crocus native to Greece. Her gardening book mentioned crocuses growing up through something called snow. The connection to quartz was that the Romans, who conquered Greece, thought that quartz was petrified ice. Ice was the solid state of water, which in nature occurred when precipitation fell on high, cold mountains _as snow. _Rapunzel had never seen snow.

The wind had been cold, when her mysterious visitor appeared. He had not been made of quartz sand. He had been made of _snow. _She was sure of it.

"Why snow?" she wondered aloud. "Who made a snow man?" She didn't ask why his magic had blasted in with angry, destructive force. Mother had told her many times about that the world was dangerous. Someone out in that world, though, had magic. She wasn't the only one.

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Author's Note:

Omagosh! Thank you for all the reviews and follows. You inspired me when I was feeling low and undermotivated to keep going. Thank you so much. I hope you will feel interested & continue reading.

While this is a Frozen/Tangled crossover, I'm also using some things from "The Snow Queen" by Hans Christian Anderson, which you probably know, inspired Frozen. Little Kay and Gerte, Mother Gartner (the Woman who could Conjure), the wild Robber Girl and her mother, and Sven's parent Bae are all Snow Queen characters. (In this story, the Lapp Woman is Kristoff's mother, and Flynn and Rapunzel are/will be the Prince and Princess.)


	9. And Suddenly I Bump Into You

[Author's note: Not Helsa. Really, really not Helsa, you'll see later. My apologies go out to the Hans/Elsa shippers.]

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Elsa couldn't sleep, and by morning she was a tired wreck from fretting over where the escaped magic had gone and what it might have done. She hadn't finished her second letter to her sister; it hadn't made her feel better. She hated that Anna couldn't remember the magic anymore. Anna had been the one person ever who begged Elsa to use it, and now Elsa couldn't even discuss it with her.

In the morning, she penned out a letter to her father so that she could broach the topic of her ice power with someone who knew about it. She didn't tell him it was stronger, or that it had gotten loose. She had never told him about Olaf. She didn't tell him about being waylaid in the forest.

She wrote to her father, instead, her questions about why she had her ice magic at all. The trolls had known what it was. Her father had told their leader that Elsa had been born with it, not cursed. But it was still a curse, wasn't it? Had there ever been anyone else cursed by magic the way she was?

She wrote for hours, bursts of words alternating with long pauses caught up in her thoughts. She wrote long past the time the ship bound for Arendelle left harbor. It was a letter that she never truly intended to send. In the end, she folded it, sealed it, and pushed it to the bottom of a drawer in her desk, stuffed in with all the others of a similar nature, never to be read. She never even imagined a fantasy of her father reading those letters. Maybe if he were different, or if she were different.

A servant tapped on her door to announce breakfast. Elsa thanked him and sent back the message that she would not be joining her aunt and uncle. She had not eaten a proper meal since the previous morning's breakfast, and her stomach made noises of hunger, but she had no appetite for sitting down with her relatives just yet.

Her breakfast turned out to be a quick one taken with the servants in the kitchen. It wasn't the first time she had done it. Cook fussed over Elsa, and only the veteran staff stayed over their porridge instead of scampering off, but otherwise it was nothing peculiar. Elsa was quite sure that the servants did not eat as well as she, though Cook always denied that the buttered toast and poached egg she served Elsa were specially prepared for their borrowed princess.

Elsa was headed to the pottery shed to continue practicing plates on the kick wheel; she was therefore dressed appropriately for a muddy activity. Her plain dress and apron let her feel less out of place in the kitchen, which was already hot with activity and bustling with the day's tasks. Elsa ate quickly, looking forward to the cooler temperature of the outdoors. Sadly, though her meal was seasoned with Cook's talent, Elsa found that it tasted like dust. She left it after the first taste for Cook to eat. Her heavy heart had barred her from an appetite as summarily as her uncle had separated her from Maximus.

ooo

Thomas was awake with the sun. His heavy sigh as he lay in bed was what woke Primrose. He saw her looking at him through eyes open halfway, and he rolled over to give her forehead a kiss. "The morning is early still. Go back to sleep," he said.

Primrose rubbed her eyes and pouted. "I can't now. You've kissed me awake." It came out grumpy. She smiled to soften the tone of sleepiness.

"At least, stay in bed," Thomas entreated as Primrose clambered out of the covers.

"Can't," Primrose answered. She made her way to the garderobe. In a few minutes, she returned, but instead of climbing back into bed, she sat down at her vanity and began brushing out her hair in front of the large mirror. "Is the matter with Elsa bothering you, too?" she asked.

Thomas sat up in bed, his reluctance to start the day evident. "It's hard to support that this was anything other than an isolated incident of opportunism," he said. "The forest is no place for any young woman, alone. We have no enemies who would target Elsa specifically."

Primrose dropped her hands into her lap. "But what about the witch," she said in a low voice. "She has not been traced."

"But after all this time, Primrose?" asked Thomas while he dressed. With a harder tone of determination, he added, "When the bandits are captured, we'll have them thoroughly questioned. We'll find out their motive quickly enough." A grim expression set on his usually kindly face.

She knew his mind. If the bandits did have any connection to the witch who had stolen Rapunzel, they would be put to the same fate as that sorceress. A quick execution would be more merciful than they deserved. Primrose disliked violence, but when she thought of the villain who had taken her daughter from her, she felt willing to rethink her ideas of justice.

And to think that ruffians dared an attempt to take Elsa…

"Elsa should not have had to suffer the experience," Primrose said. Her eyes stung, a precursor to more tears. She silently scolded herself for nurturing the emotion.

Queen Primrose greatly regretted her outburst of the day before. It wasn't like her at all. She still cried, often, for Rapunzel, but when she did so it was behind closed doors with only Thomas to witness. At times, continuing as if Rapunzel was alive and would be returned to them seemed a make-believe. They gave each other leave to weep over that open wound, and each would be strong for the other, offering comfort, when one of them couldn't hold back tears. Such maskless fragility was only to be shown to family.

"Thomas," she said, as he passed beside the chair in which she sat. She grabbed his arm and pulled it over her shoulder. He wrapped the other arm around her and stood behind her. Her eyes met his in the mirror's reflection. "Elsa is like a daughter to me, now," she confessed.

Indeed, Primrose realised, she thought of the girl as her own. In more ways than one, young Elsa filled a space that a daughter would hold. Elsa had shaped her own space in Primrose's heart, right next to the one for Rapunzel. Primrose had to be forgiven if the line between those spaces sometimes blurred. Sometimes, she looked at Elsa and imagined another, golden-haired girl right beside her, the two as matched as two lilies in a vase.

Thomas leaned over and kissed the top of her head. He then bowed further, his hands on her shoulders, to put his head next to hers. "I see my sister Genevieve in her," he surrendered. "Her every expression. If not for the color of her hair, I could mistake her for her mother at this age."

"Would it be any easier, if we had been able to have another child?" Primrose asked. Even as the question left her mouth, she found it stupid. "No, of course it wouldn't be."

"We're young yet," Thomas countered. An invitation lighted in his eyes. He nuzzled her neck. "We could still give Rapunzel a little brother or sister, as long as we keep trying."

"It's important for us to try,"Primrose agreed in a cozy voice. "We should never give up." She let herself be led from her chair and back to bed. Her husband was a comfort to her, and they took comfort in each other.

ooo

On a modest sailing ship in Corona's harbor, a tall, slim aristocrat tossed a Wanted poster down on the table where his brother sat. "Look at this, Holger," he said with disgust. He turned away, stroking his beard into a sharper point. "They've already caught the attention of the law, here."

The second man, as broad chested as a blacksmith, pulled the woodblock printed poster closer. He made a clucking with his tongue. "Well, we were right about where they went," he said. He ran a large hand through his dark hair. "Bandits! If not for the disgrace to our family, I'd say leave them to rot in a foreign dungeon." Holger rose out of his chair, looming over the table. "Johan, we should have paid our regards to the local king and queen when we came into port last night. When Bram and Gunnar see their faces in print, they'll hightail to the next country and we'll lose the trail again."

"Let's go now and get it over with," said Johan. "We can do the niceties quickly and get a free meal for the horses while we're at it. Where is Hans? We'll have to take him with us. At least he can mind the horses."

"I'm right here," the adolescent boy sulked, unfolding from a corner in shadows.

"Are you ready to go now, Holger?" Johan asked. He barely acknowledged Hans. "I'd like to get after those idiots by mid-morning. At least their wanted status here will make it easier to get them to come back with us."

"Too bad. I always planned to drag them back in a headlock, one in each arm," said Holger, flexing his beefy arms to demonstrate.

Hans chimed in. "Couldn't we just tell them that Father wants them back home?"

"Let's go," said Holger. He pulled on a princely coat wide enough for his frame.

Johan headed out. "Hans, get the horses! Why do you never put yourself to use? You asked to be brought along, now show some vigor."

Hans started to answer back, but Johan and Holger were already out the door. He tagged after them, saying, "I'm not your manservant."

"Well, no one would assume you were a prince. Where are your gloves? You have a commoner's ingratitude and peasant hands. Like your mother," he finished sharply. "We wouldn't be on this snipe hunt if Father hadn't taken a new wife out of the riff raff."

Hans could not answer back to the taunt, at least not without unpleasant consequences. His mother was his father's third wife, and she had been a commoner. When she had asked Hans to go with his half brothers to track down her two oldest boys, Hans had jumped at the chance to see somewhere other than the Isles. It was a chance to find his fortune, out in the world, because there was no fortune for him in Southern Isles.

ooo

Pottery was a muddy business. Elsa knew there was no way to form the spun shapes in clay without getting a thick coating on her hands and wrists, mud under her nails, and splatters of earth on her clothing. She still didn't like dirt. She didn't like the ungainly kicking needed to keep the wheel spinning, either. The aggressive pounding on the lump of clay to prepare it for working on the wheel still felt awkward for her.

It was also somehow satisfying on a deep level, though, and as she "wedged" the clay lump, it was like smashing down on the stormy feelings inside her. The whirring of the potter's wheel made a calming white noise, too. When the clay was on the wheel, the slightest pressure or angle of her fingers pushed the clay tall, or pushed it flat. The form became hollow; the walls became thin. She was precise with her movements, after all this time, after years of learning the nuances of the craft. Still, the clay would do unpredictable things. She had one proto-dish after another tear apart or unexpectedly collapse while forming. Earth was not her element; it didn't always cooperate.

From the whole morning, she was only able to get one suitable dish from her efforts. Anything not up to her standards, she squashed down and put back in a lidded bucket. She cut the new plate free from the wheel and took it into the drying shed to slowly dry alongside others like it. After she cleaned up the potter's wheel and tools, she scrubbed as much as she could of the mud off her hands and used a stiff brush on her clothes.

She returned to the drying shed and went in, latching the hook on the door behind her. The interior was as cool as a cellar from the moisture of resting greenware. Woven straw mats covered the floor between the rows of shelving. The walls were louvers: a clever design to regulate airflow and light. Elsa walked slowly through the aisles.

She was soothed by the evidence of the symmetry that formed under her hands. She could not have created the beautiful shapes, lined up in rows, while wearing gloves.

She thought about her old gloves and felt a stirring of panic. They would never fit her now. The power had gone right through her riding gloves. Only the ones her father had given her had ever held the ice back.

_But it had been years!_ she reminded herself. She stopped wearing gloves because her power had stayed calm. She had been able to make Olaf, every now and again - mostly during her first year in Corona - without the ice turning wild. It had been like before Anna got hurt. She could make a few frost patterns on her bedroom ceiling, or freeze water in the wash basin, and that had been enough to stop the way her fingers tingled when she was nervous, and when she missed home, or sometimes for what seemed like no reason at all.

"No gloves." Her quiet admonition came out with a cold breath. "I'm never going back to that. I have to do this on my own." She raised her hands, feeling terrified, but more terrified of the unthinkable: that she could never go back to Anna. That Aunt Primrose and Uncle Thomas would find out that they had housed a sorceress all this time. That she really wasn't in control of magic that _wasn't going to stop happening._

"Olaf!" she whispered. "Please. I need you." She turned her hands inward, the way she held them when shaping the curving sides of a vase. Between them, a mass of snow formed. It was like a tiny blizzard, a scene in a globe. Icicles formed like blades and spun around in the wind, but it all stayed within the boundaries of the globe.

Elsa widened the distance between her hands. She moved down to the ground, holding the magic like a delicate bowl. The scene within turned flat, like a mirror. She saw herself there, wide-eyed and frightened. She closed her eyes to the frightened face and thought about Olaf's funny face instead. She sat back, her feet tucked under her seat, and relaxed her arms to let the magic go.

She opened her eyes and saw Olaf, still spinning like a top. Something wasn't right about the way he looked. His eyes had a flat, lifeless aspect, and his usually grinning mouth was open as if silently howling. "Olaf!" she gasped, worried for him. She stopped his spinning by grabbing his stick arms. "What's wrong?"

The snowman blinked his eyes and his face went through a series of odd expressions. But when he finally looked at Elsa, he was back to his usual self. "Woah! That's dizzy-making!" he commented. "Wow, Elsa. That's a new look for you."

He was taking in her clay-stained appearance. Elsa looked down at her clothes. She looked back at him. "Olaf, are you all right?"

"Yeah. Sure. Why do you ask?"

The face full of rage. The despairing eyes. "You do seem back to normal," she said.

"OK," said Olaf.

It seemed abrupt to dismiss him now, but Elsa wanted to return to the castle and have a bath. She might slip by the stables on her way, in case the guard were back from patrol, so she could at least see her equine friend for a moment. She lifted her fingers, seeing if she could will Olaf away with the slight gesture. He instantly turned back into snowflakes, which then glittered away as dissipating magic.

The encounter was unsettling. She didn't know what to think.

It gave her all the more reason to see Maximus. Her uncle had said she couldn't ride the horse anymore, but he hadn't said she couldn't spend any time with him. She was sure that the guard captain wouldn't mind if Elsa helped groom Maximus, and she knew that Maximus would be happy to see her.

With her mood brightened by the anticipation, she ran across the castle grounds to the stables. The guard, with their horses, were not yet returned, but with her estimation of the hour, she expected them back soon. She went to get the water bucket out of Maximus' stall, first. She'd gather up the grooming tools after she visited the well.

Some crows were making a fuss on the other side of the yard, cawing and fighting. She didn't pay much attention to the birds, but the sound of a horse's whinny did call her to investigate. Three unfamiliar horses were stabled in the second row of stalls, toward the other end where the building opened to a side yard. It was no more out of her way to get to the well from that exit than the other, so Elsa carried her bucket over to take a look at the horses.

"Fjord horses," she wondered aloud when she saw them. They had the distinctive two-toned manes of horses from back home. All of Corona's horses were Spanish breeds, like Maximus. She stopped at a stall and looked at one that had a yellowish coat, like the skin of an overripe lemon, to go with its black-and-white mane and tail. The horse seemed unconcerned by her approach, so she stepped up on the crosspiece of the stall door to say hello.

A boy appeared in the building's doorway. "You there! What do you think you're doing?"

Though momentarily startled, Elsa didn't hop down. She collected herself and turned toward the boy. "Excuse me?" she asked.

She saw the boy look her up and down. "That's my horse," he said, his manner sharp and haughty, "that you're gawking at. Get away from him."

Elsa stepped down from her perch. She didn't know who this boy was, so she held back a retort.

"Are you even supposed to be here?" he interrogated.

She considered. She could tell him who she was and see how his manner changed when he found out that she was the crown princess of Arendelle. Something about doing that struck her as wrong. With a moment of thought more, she realized that this was because a title's ability to command respect depended on the assessment of strength by the other party. A ruler needed to be able to deal with confrontation without relying on a title. Strength had to come from the ruler herself.

The boy seemed irritated by the lack of her reply. "Well, girl?" he demanded. He looked her up and down. "Don't you know to answer your betters?"

Elsa fixed her face in a mask so that her shock wouldn't show. She could see that he took her dirty appearance as a marker of low rank. She was carrying a bucket to water the horses, too. He must have thought she was, at best, a servant.

She used the moment to take her own assessment of him. He waited with clear impatience for a response from her. Elsa recognized that they had started on the wrong foot. She tried to steer the encounter to a more pleasant mood by extending hospitality, though she still didn't want to reveal her identity yet. "I was fetching water for when the palace guard return. Does your horse need some water?"

"I took care of that already. Since there was no one to attend me," he accused.

The paleness of his skin went with his russet hair. His face didn't exhibit freckles. He didn't spend a lot of time outdoor, in spite the abused look of his hands. He had workman's hands, as if he often did rough work where something like embers marked him with small scars. The tinsmith's apprentice had the same kind of burn damage, but Elsa felt sure that the arrogant boy wasn't a tradesman.

He wore well-made clothing, Elsa noticed, though it appeared half-heartedly tailored, as if taken down from a different wearer. It was a better fit than the charity clothes on orphans, yet Elsa suspected that it was also handed-down.

Elsa softened her voice to a tone that Queen Primrose would use. "Corona is normally better in our welcome of visitors. I hope you won't think ill of us. The grooms must not have expected you. Is there anything else you need for you or your horses' comfort?"

Her manner gave him pause, she could see. A question ran across his expression, and then his eyes narrowed with a look of recalculation. "No, my brothers are in the castle now," he started. "We did arrive unannounced."

Elsa noted the minute shift in his manner to a more pleasant attitude. She was pleased that her tactic was working.

ooo


	10. Never Going Back

A/N: Warnings: There is abuse of animals in this chapter. It's not graphic, but I wanted to warn you. Warning also for implication of suicidal thoughts in this chapter and onward.

And of course, the disclaimer that's sort of a given: None of these characters are mine. Snow Queen characters are in the public domaine; Frozen and Tangled characters are the property of Disney. Many elements of my story, including the scene coming up, are inspired by fanart or other people's headcanons. You can find them reblogged on my tumblr (butterflydrming).

ooo

Elsa cast him a pleasant smile, intended to mollify. Without turning away from him, because eye contact was important for making a person feel acknowledged, she began, "Your horse seems good natured. What's his na- " Her question was interrupted by the noisy crows. Loudly scolding, a crow swooped in through the doorway and aimed at the boy's head. It overshot into the stable and doubled back to harass the boy again.

The boy yelled in anger and leaped at the bird, vainly trying to catch it. He ran back outside after it without giving Elsa another glance.

She followed. Sometime the crows nested too close in the nearby trees, and they would defend their offspring with bravery, but it was too late in the year for fledglings. The crows around the castle were generally quite tame, also.

The crow had flown up to the edge of the roof, where it hollered its rough diatribe at the boy. The boy picked up a handful of small stones and pitched them at the crow in fast succession. One of the rocks hit the bird, clearly hurting it. It fluttered up to a higher part of the roof, still cawing, and did not fly away.

A second crow lay on the ground. Elsa gasped when she saw twine tied around its legs. The other end of the twine wrapped around a rock. The bound crow tried in vain to fly when the boy approached. The flapping of its black wings was tired and desperate.

The boy aimed at the crow on the ground with one of his stones. He was flushed across cheeks and forehead with excitement or rage. Elsa could not tell which.

Elsa screamed at him, "What are you doing!"

He turned to face her. His expression was an ugly one. He turned away again, threw the remaining stones all at once at the crow on the roof, then looked back at Elsa with a cruel expression. He looked at the crow on the ground, then pointedly looked back at Elsa.

"Stop!" Elsa entreated. "Why are you hurting it?"

"It attacked me," he stated, seeming to savor the anticipation of revenge, "for no reason at all. And that one," he pointed at the crow on the roof, "keeps swooping at me." He studied the crow on the ground. "I'm teaching it a lesson. I think I'll cut off its legs." His hand went to the dagger hanging on his belt.

"You can't! You'll be punished if you do!"

"I can, you peasant girl," the boy sneered. "I'm _prince _Hans of the Southern Isles. What are you going to do, tell someone? Who would believe you?" He stepped toward the tethered crow. The crow thrashed in the dirt. Hans began to draw the dagger out of its sheath, his motion slow and contemplative. He was tormenting the outraged witness as much as he had abused the crow. "Who would even listen?" he added.

When he moved with sudden speed, flipping the dagger over and lunging down toward the bird, Elsa reacted. She dashed toward him. When her body slammed into his, it was not an accident. She didn't know how to fight this way, but she had seen how town boys fought. She ended on the ground, too, herself. If she hadn't been instructed in the variety of athletics her Aunt Primrose had required, she would have done worse than give herself a bruise from the hard landing.

The boy prince sprawled across the ground. His face had scraped in the packed dirt. He uprighted himself in an instant. A snarl contorting his face, he threw himself at Elsa. He pinned her down and put a hard knee into her stomach.

This is what she had been afraid of when the bandits chased her. They, however, were large men, while prince Hans was closer to Elsa's size. She fought to throw him off, fighting at the same time against her coiling power. The painful pressure of his knee created a pressure in her ice magic to strike him with a blast of ice, and she was afraid of her power's violence. Elsa's freezing hands grabbed around his coat sleeve as she tried to push him away without letting the force of ice escape.

He yelled at the sudden cold that wrapped his arm. He jumped away. Rubbing his arm from wrist to shoulder, he stared at her, but only for a moment. Then he tried to kick her face with his booted foot.

Without thinking it through, Elsa slapped hand against the ground. A skid of ice shot under Hans's feet. He went off balance in the motion of kicking and fell. He stared at Elsa with shock while she scrambled to her feet. When Hans tried to stand up, she stomped and glazed the ground all around him with slick ice.

This was bad. He had seen her sorcery; that was bad enough. But the magic pulsed like her racing heartbeat, and she remembered the vicious blades of ice that she had thrown at the bandits and how violent her magic was when out of her control. She pushed the power down. The castle guard would return soon. They could deal with Prince Hans.

She stayed wary of him while she used his dropped dagger to cut the bound crow loose. The poor animal was too weary to peck at her. It made pathetic rasps while the crow on the roof bellowed anxious responses. She carefully cut the knots around the bird's feet until it was free. It lay on the ground for a heartbeat longer. Then, suddenly energized, it sprang into the air and landed the short distance away near its partner.

Elsa considered pitching the dagger into the distance. Instead, she tied it with the cut twine to her apron strings.

"That's mine!" Hans yelled. He made another attempt to stand but could only get to his knees. "Return it, you thief!"

Furious, Elsa stepped toward him. She blew untidy hair out her face and took a moment to assess her opponent. Her hands tingled so badly that she had to let puffs of snow out to ease the tingling. The ice storm inside her fought for release. She looked him over as if he were something rotten at the bottom of a jar.

He reacted to the look with escalating anger of his own. He tried to knock her off her feet again by yanking at her ankles. She stepped back out of his reach.

"You're doing magic!" Hans accused her. "You can't do that!" He paused. A calculating look crawled over his face.

"Yes. I can," answered Elsa. It gave her a frisson of cold from head to foot to admit it aloud. It felt like cold lightning crackling out from the storm still raging in her center.

She recalled that the youngest of the Southern Isles princes was more than a year older than she. If this boy was Prince Hans, he was small for fourteen years. Adding in to account his handed-down clothing, it was a sad appearance for a prince, but she would have been able to forgive him those things if he had not entertained himself by torturing a smaller creature. She silently chastised herself for lowering herself to the level of a brawler, not to mention that she now had the problem of Hans as a witness to her secret.

She was starting to feel the shaky feeling that followed a threat, and with it a fear crawled over her. Three Fjord horses, in all: she remembered Hans saying that his brothers were in the castle. And the guard were due to return. She had to get her magic under complete control and hidden again before anyone else saw it.

Hans started to get to his feet, achieving success by using slow, careful movements. "Sorcery is evil," he said.

Elsa tensed because his words were too close to her thoughts.

His voice had gone as smooth and sweet as honey. "However… we could make a deal," he started. "You're pretty enough. A girl like you shouldn't get locked up in a dungeon, or worse. No one has to know you're a monster. No one has to find out. If I don't tell them… "

"How dare _you_ call _me_ a monster," Elsa growled. "How dare you… you think... that you can offer me allegiance?" Hans wore a soft expression, she saw, that transformed his face into a handsome one. The sneering, cruel nature was concealed with the guise of Prince Charming. "Or maybe you were thinking that I would go weak in the knees for you b-because you're a prince?" That sensation of being pulled in multiple directions at once, trapping her in place, came over her again.

Hans continued to smile. He even laughed, lightly, as if she had said something amusing. "Come now, don't be like that," he said. He lifted an open hand toward her. "It can be our secret. Nothing bad has to happen to you."

The sensation of paralysis snapped, like a string pulled too tightly. Her skin prickled all over as if she were touching pins. She felt as if her ice power would spew out of her. She could no more stop it than she could have stopped her stomach heaving if physically sick.

She cried out at the terrible feeling of the power escaping through channels newly cracked open. She was trying to pull it back in, trying to keep it from flowing out. She curled into a crouch with her bare hands pressed against her middle and her shoulders curled in. If she made herself small, the ice might shrink down, too.

_Don't. Feel._

"I… can't!" she cried out, not to Hans, but to the magic pouring out of her that urged her to let it go.

An answering howl sounded at her back. She could feel the gargantuan, cold presence of the creature. It was so familiar. It as the rage of the storm inside her, the familiar other, made solid in the world. It cast a real shadow she could see over her and Hans.

Hans stood in place, looking up at the thing behind her with his mouth agape. Elsa stood up as she turned around and saw…

...a monster made of packed snow and clear ice. Spines of ice jutted out from its hunched back. Its eyes were hollows; its fangs were icicles. It had enormous hands, disproportionately large hands, deadly hands that ended in pointed, crystalline claws. Eyes glowing with a fey light, it raised its arms and roared.

The castle guard - with astonishingly bad timing - entered the stable grounds at just that moment. Elsa turned half-away from the ice creature she had manifested at the clattering of armor. The even cadence of hoofbeats broke into disorder as the horses and their mounted guards saw the ice monster. To their credit, the men drew their swords and the startled horses held their ground.

The ice monster stepped over Elsa. He stepped out in front of her, confronting the guard, and roared again. Maximus, the bravest of horses, leaped forward. His rider swung his sword at the monster looming over them. Elsa screamed, but it came out as an airy, almost voiceless cry.

The monster bounded past the attacking guard. It hurtled past all of the guard with the force of a gale wind. It ran, scattering the cavalry out of its path, knocking riders off their mounts. The guard captain was one of the riders thrown to the ground. The monster ran off. Some of the guard raced after him on horseback, while others dismounted and saw to their injured brethren.

Elsa dashed through the chaos to hop up to Maximus's back. "Princess!" his rider called after her, "Princess Elsa, wait!" Desperate to catch her escaped magic, she ignored him and urged Maximus into pursuit. He sprung into a gallop without hesitation.

She gave no more thought to Prince Hans. She did not see the his shock double when the guard had called her by title.

Maximus had a gallop like the boom of thunder. He closed the ground to the ice monster at speed. Elsa kept her body forward, low and against his neck. She was crying, icy tears sliding off her cheeks in the wind. The monster had run down from the castle and into to town. Destruction and human injury lay in its wake.

In the path of the monster, ornamental trees bore shattered trunks, carts were broken, and market stands were overturned. Townspeople huddled in fear in doorways. Maximus dashed through the obstacle course. Their passage added to the frey already caused by the guards chasing the monster, some of whom had been unmounted or otherwise thwarted in that pursuit.

Elsa passed guards nursing gashes, bruises, and sprains. She rode on, horrified that it was her errant magic that had hurt people she considered friends. She had to be the one to catch the magic. What could anyone else do? She didn't even know what she, herself, would do when she caught up to it.

They left the center of town. The open terrain of the shoreline gave her a clear view of the remaining guards that chased and of the monster. It was running toward the woods, slowed down by its need to wreck things along the harbor boardwalk. It picked up a huge coil of tarred rope and heaved it back at the guards.

Maximus veered off the boardwalk and detoured through an alley behind the fish stands and taverns. He shot out at the edge of the woods just as the ice monster bashed through the boundary of trees. The guard were far behind. Elsa could see them caught up in a pile of detritus.

The monster avoided the road and charged through the trees and forest undergrowth. The changed terrain slowed him down, but it slowed Maximus down, too. The monster's skin was crusty. It crackled with hard, glossy scales from a cycle of melting and re-freezing. Elsa reached for the monster with her magic when they closed in on it. She tried to dismiss the monster as she would do with Olaf when she wanted him to go.

Instead of making the monster dissipate, reaching out with her magic made a tether between them. She was almost unseated from Maximus as he ran, and he whinnied when he felt her being pulled off. The connection became a channel that pulled more from her and gave it to the monster. It grew larger as its ice renewed.

Elsa panicked. She signaled Maximus to run, but Maximus refused. Instead, he confronted the monster with short, aggressive charges that confused it. It howled and slashed at the tree canopy, but it would not attack Maximus. Its increased size left it few avenues to run. It lumbered toward a break in the dense tree cover.

Maximus continued herding the monster toward the open space. It was not a glade or meadow; it was a bare strip at the edge of a ravine. The monster may have heard the yells and calls of the guard, who were now catching up to Elsa, because it turned around. With a sharp drop behind it and the guard riding up behind Elsa and Maximus, the ice monster had nowhere to retreat.

The monster looked at Elsa. Its hollow eyes met hers.

A terrible, cold emptiness fell over Elsa with the creature's shadow. In that moment, she understood that the creature was not something she could will away. She slid out of the saddle, to Maximus's consternation, and pushed past the horse. Her slow steps toward the ice monster were not from caution. She could hardly move.

This was the real Elsa, she told herself, the wrongness that everyone would see if they knew her true self. She would never be free of it, and it would only get stronger and larger. She couldn't control it, because it was bigger than her. It would consume her, and she would be helpless against it.

It would destroy everything.

Time had only made it stronger.

She would never be able to return home. Leaving Arendelle was never temporary. Anna was happy and safe, as long as Elsa was far away from her. Anna was safe. Anna was happy… as long as… Elsa… accepted exile.

She was never going back.

The guards rode up just as the monster turned and stepped off the cliff's edge. Elsa, nearly at the edge herself, saw it break into chunks as its body crashed and tumbled. It hit the bottom of the ravine and exploded in a cloud of snow that slowly drifted upward and evaporated.

Maximus grabbed the back of her dress with his teeth and pulled her away from the sheer edge. Then the guard were all around her. They were cheering. Maximus nudged her away from the danger of the ravine. She was boosted back up into the saddle. Still, the guards shouted praises and cheers.

She was in a daze all through the procession back through the town, which became a spontaneous parade. Maximus marched at the front of the parade, yet it took Elsa time to realize that they were celebrating her. The townsfolk began raining brightly colored paper and flower petals from upper story windows. Children ran alongside the procession, whooping and shouting. The citizens of Corona shouted out her name, "Elsa! Princess Elsa!"

"Princess Elsa, our Elsa!" the crowd cheered.

"Our hero!"

"The hero who saved Corona!"

"All hail Princess Elsa, defender of Corona!"

The praise and shouts went on and on, a wild and happy noise. The crowd lauded her. The people of Corona raved.

All Elsa could see was the destruction that she had inflicted on the town. The procession rode through wreck and ruin. The shouting voices blended and overlapped.

"...Elsa!"

"...of Corona…"

What was the difference, she wondered, between the sound of a cheering crowd and the sound of an angry mob?

ooo


	11. Cut Through the Heart

Messengers ran ahead to take the marvelous news up to the castle: the monster was destroyed, solely by young Princess Elsa!

The impromptu parade became a party in the town. Children ran around collecting the scraps of colored paper, which they strung into garlands and fashioned into necklaces. They gifted the necklaces to their mothers, or in the case of older children, their sweethearts. The procession erupted in dancing even before Elsa and the guards continued up the hill to the castle. Pockets of dancing continued on afterward.

One enterprising trader made the most of broken beer casks by selling servings of the beer directly out of his wagon. For a fraction of the usual price of a pint, he ladled beer into steins before it could dribble away into the street. As dusk closed in, an innkeeper whose nearby tavern had suffered in the rampage offset the detraction of his broken tables by emulating the beer trader's ingenuity, and it worked to bring in customers who might otherwise have gone home after the parade. Other taverns grew generous with their portions just to compete, pouring more than beer for a festival price. Spirits were high as the spirits flowed. Merrymakers who couldn't find a sound bench drank their liquor and ate their dinners while wandering in the street, and their revelry heightened the already excited atmosphere.

In the ensuing hours, facts became fable. Sung as songs and turned into competing ballads, the recounted tale was that the monster had been an evil spell set upon the Kingdom of Corona by an unknown enemy; the spell had been undone by the bravery of Princess Elsa. Another version of the story credited her purity as the power that banished the creature. A variant that included a spell attack on Elsa when she was a child came from an accidental mention by matron who had once been a maid at the castle. Someone came up with the theory that the enemy that had stolen Princess Rapunzel had come back to steal away Elsa, too, but this theory was only popular with a younger generation that tended to forget that Elsa was not Corona's daughter. Those older remembered the outrage of their stolen princess all too well, still.

ooo

By the time the procession marched Elsa to the castle, she felt like an imposter. The King and Queen, waiting at the castle doors, rushed to collect her. The crowd sent up a cheer. Elsa dismounted, but she clung to Maximus's reins.

King Thomas waived the captain of the guard over. The captain hurried near. "I'll see to Maximus," the captain told Elsa in the gentlest of tones. "You can let go, Your Highness."

Elsa could not look at the captain directly. The man wore a sling restraining what appeared to be a broken arm. She nodded, then made herself relinquish the reins.

Queen Primrose put a sheltering arm around her. "Elsa, dear Elsa," she murmured. "Let's get you in."

Elsa felt faint when she saw Hans, standing beside two men she conjectured to be the older princes, waiting with the crowd of people in the entrance hall. Their eyes met for only a moment before he looked away. The queen commented on the focus of Elsa's attention.

"The princes of Southern Isles," she said, only for Elsa's ears. "We'll introduce you properly in due time. Though I understand you have met Prince Hans. He's been quite helpful in the account of events."

"Helpful!" Elsa laughed, eliciting an odd look from her aunt.

Her aunt seemed to see the state she was in, at least on the surface, for the first time. "This won't do," she said. She gave King Thomas a squeeze on his arm, and when she had his attention, they exchanged a wordless message.

Queen Primrose navigated Elsa away from the others and down a branching hallway. A few of the queen's attendants followed, ready to provide whatever service the royal ladies would need. The group passed through rooms as a shortcut to the bathing room. A bath sounded like a wonderful thing, to Elsa, and she quickened her pace when she saw where they were headed.

Primrose shooed the curious maids away after they brought fresh clothes for Elsa. The queen drew the bath herself. The royal bath was an ingenious mechanism with a tap to bring clean, heated water into the alabaster tub and a drain to empty it. It was large enough for someone of the king's size to recline in and small enough to fill in a short time. The water flowed from the tap to a basin, where the temperature could be adjusted with a second tap of cool water, then from the basin to the tub in a miniature waterfall. It worked via the same engineering that brought fresh water for cooking and drinking up to the castle's hilltop location.

Elsa stripped off her clay-smudged clothes and stepped into the filling tub. "Please stay with me," she asked Primrose, suddenly frightened to be alone.

Primrose pulled a stool over next to the tub and sat. "Of course, I'll stay," she said.

When the tub was nearly full, Elsa slipped herself down so that her head went under the water. She blew out a cloud of bubbles. If her aunt weren't there, she might have kept her head submerged until she ran out of air. She wanted to.

Without splashing, she pushed back up through the surface. She started to pick the last of her braid out of her hair, which she should have done before getting it wet.

"Here, I'll do that," said Primrose. She scooted the stool over so that she could undo Elsa's tangle. She combed it through first with her fingers, then lathered soap made with flowers and worked the suds into Elsa's hair. "This is a lot of dirt," she commented. "A little more, and you'd be a brunette."

"I was at the pottery," Elsa explained.

"Ah." Primrose continued washing Elsa's hair. "How you've grown, beautiful child," she sighed.

"I'm not a child anymore, Aunt." Elsa was, and she wasn't. She knew she needed to act like a woman, at her age, but she still felt like a child. In a way, time had been frozen for her ever since Anna had leaped faster than Elsa could make a hill of snow to catch her.

"No… you're not. But, Elsa, grown women, even princesses, have permission to be afraid." Primrose was careful to wipe the suds dripping from Elsa's bangs away before they stung her eyes.

"Even princesses?"

"Even a queen," Primrose said.

"But she can't show anyone that she's afraid," Elsa said. She almost said more. She wanted to say more, but she couldn't make the words come out. They were stuck inside her, stuck with her tears, pressed down by an invisible weight.

"Oh, Elsa, dear… ! You did a brave, brave thing today, but if I had known what you were doing before it was done, I would have be so afraid for you." Primrose dipped her hands to wash off the suds. She pulled them out and set them on her lap. Only her voice revealed her anguish. "How could you have known that you would be able to defeat the spell? Why did you go at all?"

Elsa sank down into the water. She used the excuse of rinsing her hair to avoid meeting Queen Primrose's eyes. "I had to try," she said, relieved to be able to say something close to the truth.

"I would tell you never to do anything like that again, if I thought you would listen," said Primrose. "How I wish there would never be another occasion for you to test that."

Elsa slowly scrubbed at her fingers with a soapy washcloth.

"What can I do, to keep you safe?"

_Give me Maximus_, Elsa thought to herself. _If not for him, I would be in the bottom of a ravine. _She shook her head, and said, "Maybe it's not for you to keep me safe. Maybe it's that I… that it's up to me to keep others safe. To keep Corona safe." _From me._

The queen looked at her with confusion, a look that slowly altered into consideration. "You don't have a debt to Corona that you have to repay," Primrose said.

Before the end of the day, however, Elsa would find out that she did owe, to the people of Corona and to the king and queen, and there was no getting out of the obligation.

ooo

Flynn wouldn't usually take his chances at The Snuggly Duckling, but the old robber woman had cleared out their camp by the time he circled back to it after a day of evading guards. She'd taken her daughter and every scrap of food and gear. Stabbington and Other Stabbington had a separate camp, and they, too, had packed up and disappeared. Or so Flynn thought.

Such was the life of an adventurer, Flynn told himself. A man of sixteen years, he'd weathered his share of setbacks since escaping the orphanage. He had a tough skin. He could roll with the punches.

Sweet-talking a barmaid susceptible to a smoldering look would have been his first choice method for getting dinner, but with the guard on high alert, any tavern along King's Road was too risky. The Duckling was a pit of unsavory characters because of its remote and secluded location in the woods. He paid actual coin for the privilege of the sloppy bowl of stew and a dark corner to eat it in. The public house was warm, as well as stinky, but he planned a safer - albeit chilly - night sleeping outside.

It was while he wolfed down the sour stew that the Stabbington brothers slammed through the front door of The Snuggly Duckling. Not appearing the least bit intimidated by the rough customers already in the pub, they took seats in their own dark corner (the interior of the Duckling was mostly dark corners) to swill tankards of the house ale. The burlier Stabbington, if the distinction could be made, wore a strip of cloth wound around his head to hold a bandage on his eye in place.

Flynn didn't know the thieves well at all. They'd made an alliance a few months ago with the old woman and Flynn for a heist that needed a couple of small bodies to crawl through some narrow spaces. The Stabbingtons had some shadowy connections, but they could move high value items, and Flynn liked his cut of the better jobs. The Brothers Stabbington seemed to like working with the others over the last few months because the old woman was ruthless and Flynn was quick at thinking on his feet in tricky situations.

He sank back further into the shadows of his corner. After the way the day had gone, Flynn was A-OK with going back to doing his own thing. Stealing objects or animals was one thing. Abducting girls was another.

The Snuggly Duckling had exactly one exit/entrance. Everyone that patronized the place wanted to be able to keep an eye on all comings and goings. No one would be snuck up on, and no one could sneak out with loot that didn't come in with them. Flynn didn't want to hang around the pub for too long. With all the wanted posters going up, anyone at all might choose to turn him in for the reward. He made his way toward the door using other customers for cover, moving as quickly as he could without drawing attention. Unfortunately, one of the drunkards gestured wildly when calling for more wine, knocking over a pile of dishes, just as Flynn crept by.

One of the Stabbingtons called out, "Rider!"

Flynn didn't have a choice but to acknowledge them. He altered his path toward the door so that it seemed that he moved in their direction. "Gentlemen!" he said, playing up camaraderie. "Fancy running in to you!"

The two redheads stood up. Flynn tried, unsuccessfully, not to flinch. "Let's talk outside," the one who still had two good eyes said. The other one grunted agreement.

Flynn and the Stabbingtons filed out of the pub, into the night. They stopped where a little of the light from the pub still illuminated the clearing. Flynn made ready to run if it looked like the thugs were going to start punching. He was pretty sure that they didn't realize how he'd helped Princess Elsa when they tried kidnap her, but a little doubt kept him on his toes.

"What's up, gentlemen?" he asked.

"We're crossing the border tonight. Got us a horse, so we'll be out of Corona before dawn tomorrow," said the slightly smaller Stabbington. Flynn had always thought of him as Cinnamon Stabbington because the man seemed to have a real love for spice and always smelled a little like a grannie's kitchen. Plus, the red hair. Needless to say, Flynn never revealed his secret name.

"All of us?" asked Flynn. That would be another reason to start running.

"We can't take you with us when we clear out," said the bandaged Stabbington. "Got to see a surgeon we know in a hurry." He gestured at his injured eye and growled, "No thanks to that little witch."

"It ain't a three-man horse. You have to stay behind, Rider. Best of luck to you. See if you can find out who that girl is," Cinnamon Stabbington said to Flynn. "It's a guarantee that her rich parents will pay out well to keep her little secret."

"And she owes me an eye," the injured one joked. Both brothers laughed at the grim humor.

"We'll be back through this way again," One-Eye Stabbington stated. "We'll look you up when we do. No hard feelings, right?"

Flynn hid his relief. "No, of course not," he agreed. "Smaller numbers, easier to stay ahead of the law. I'll be alright."

"Good," said Cinnamon. He slapped a thick hand against Flynn's back, almost knocking over. "There's more honor among thieves than among princes," he said.

"Hey, we made a great team," said Flynn, already inching away.

"Good luck, Rider." The brothers headed back into the Duckling.

Flynn didn't stick around to test his luck. He jogged away, into the cover of woods and darkness. While he'd been part of the old woman's robber band, he had camped with them, but he still kept his own base camp. It was a small cave - too small for a bear to want - where he stored some of his more interesting "acquisitions." As long as he went back to it on a regular basis, the smell of his human presence discouraged other wild things from moving in. Flynn could find his home base in the dark without difficulty. He had great night vision, the skill honed from living primarily in the woods.

In the cave, he had a clean, safe space. It was less of a cave than it was a deep niche, like the pocket left behind when a berry is picked out of a blueberry muffin. It wasn't a home as much as it was a vault. He kept a spare bedroll and spare packs in it.

The walls were crumbly stone, pocked with harder rocks. He could carve the walls a bit or pry out a stones to make little niches within the niche, for shelves. Flynn's choice acquisitions thus lined the walls, or decorated the floor, depending on size. It was an eclectic mix of things, nothing intrinsically worth more than a few coins if even sellable, that nevertheless had a certain something to them: a small collection of worn out books, a silver-plated fork that he liked for aesthetic reasons, a glass paperweight marked with the official insignia of Corona's naval fleet, foreign coins from distant lands, and other items of a similar nature. As a burglar and pickpocket, Flynn cultivated opportunism.

Surrounded by his collection, he curled up in his bedroll facing a doorway that he blocked with a concealing assortment of broken tree branches. From the outside, the cave would look inhabited by a badger or some other animal unsafe to disturb. He would be comfortable for the night, hidden in the forest. Alone and free.

Which wasn't to say that he wouldn't like the comforts of a house in the town, close to everything. Close to people and life. When he was honest with himself, he could admit that he missed that.

ooo


	12. They'll Never See Me Cry

Corona Castle shined a golden reflection onto the bay below. Every lamp alight and candelabras blazing, it illuminated a town alive with festive revelry. In the castle itself, a magnificent dinner was being assembled. A line of musicians waited in the courtyards, each quartet, quintet, or duo hoping to be among those chosen to perform at the celebratory feast. Miscellaneous performers juggled and tumbled to a merry cacophony of competing tunes.

With guests in the castle, Elsa could not hide in her room, no matter how much she wanted to close the door and tell everyone to go away. There was no escaping the feast being assembled in her honor that was beginning in short time. Dressed in her most elegant ball gown, wearing delicate shoes made for dancing, she hid herself in the castle's library. She planned to stay there until the absolute last moment. She had an obligation to the guests, and she would fulfill it, but... not any sooner than necessary.

For events planned with advanced notice, allowing time for travel, invitations to the celebration went out to nobility far and wide. For this event, the invitation list was, by necessity, limited to visitors and those within the kingdom. Elsa was sure she could have convinced her aunt and uncle to delay the celebration, or even to do without the fanfare, if not for the visiting princes.

One of whom was an animal-torturing sadist, she couldn't avoid recalling. The obligation of entertaining Prince Hans and his brothers was a nightmare for Elsa. First, before the feast was served, there would be formal dancing. With so few on the evening's guest list, Elsa knew she would not be able to avoid Hans. It made her feel sick to her stomach to think of it.

His version of events, Elsa found out on review, claimed that the ice monster had appeared without any warning. She found out that he had, in fact, chased after her part of the way on horseback. Hans had returned to the castle ahead of Elsa with the messengers reporting her success. He had kept her secret, it seemed.

The library was not a good hiding place. It was enormous, for one thing, one of the largest rooms in the castle. Shelves lines the walls so high that twin staircases spiraled on each side. A room three levels tall, back in Arendelle, would be too large to heat. The shelves contained decades of histories as well countess works of poetry and collected plays. Her aunt Primrose admitted to not having read them all, at least not yet.

She stepped up one of the staircases and sat down on a step at one of the bends. She arranged her skirts around her so that she would be able to stand back up without tripping on them and falling down the stairs. She loved the dress. The making of it had been a gift for her birthday from her aunt. It was yards and yards of draping, pale blue satin, embellished with clear glass beads along the hem, shaped with a neckline that made her feel very grown up. Simple silver pins fixed her hair up off her neck to show off white topaz earrings and a matching necklace. Her nails were polished, not a speck of clay left to mar them; nevertheless, Elsa wore long, white, satin gloves covering from fingertip to elbow.

"A-ha! Found you!"

Elsa scrambled to her feet. She grabbed the staircase railing for support. "Kay!" She almost lost her footing from the relief. For a moment, when she heard the boy's voice, she had feared it was Prince Hans that had discovered her.

Gerte appeared a moment behind Kay. Both were dressed better than Elsa had ever seen them. Gerte, who had bloomed in adolescence like a summer rose, wore a pretty gown in goldenrod yellow. Kay wore a suit in navy blue, and new boots.

"You're not hiding out here, are you?" Gerte asked. "From your own party?"

Elsa responded with only a tight smile. With care, she made her way down the stairs.

"It's terribly dark in here, Elsa," Kay commented.

"How lovely to see you, both," Elsa said. "Is Mother Gartner here as well?"

"Yes. Mother Gartner is with the king and queen," Gerte said, "and they are all looking for you."

"But I found you," Kay said, giving Elsa a bright smile. "May I lead you back to their highnesses, Your Highness?" He bowed without mockery, then offered Elsa his arm.

Elsa gave him a light pat on his sleeve but declined his escort.

"I hope you will give me a dance with you," Kay said as the three left the library.

"You can have all my dances," Elsa said without thinking. She saw look of dismay that ran over Gerte's face and didn't know what to make of it. Kay looked like he had just been granted knighthood. "Why don't you both go on and watch the entertainment? I promise," she said, forestalling Kay's protest, "that I will go directly to the king and queen. Where are they waiting?"

Gerte answered over whatever else Kay was about to say. "They are in the receiving room," she said. She pulled Kay toward her and started leading him away. "That's a great idea, Elsa. We'll go watch the auditions. We can tell you about the ones too awful to be picked."

Elsa watched them for a moment. Kay was complaining to Gerte and the girl was answering back in a hushed voice as she nearly dragged her friend down the corridor. Kay looked back and waved to Elsa. She gave a little wave back before she turned and went in her own direction.

Her uncle and aunt were, as indicated, in the most formal room of the castle. Once a year, for the festival of Rapunzel's birthday, the jeweled tiara of the missing princess went on display in this room. The rest of the year, the display pedestal went into storage, and the tiara was locked away with the rest of the crown jewels. For this reason, Elsa was puzzled to see what looked like the tiara's box of mother-of-pearl inlaid wood in her uncle's hands.

She crossed the large room to her Aunt Primrose and Uncle Thomas, Queen and King of Corona, who stood close together, holding a quiet conversation. They both smiled when they saw her. There was something more to their smiles than the usual welcome.

She said hello to both and asked, "Did Mother Gartner go already?"

"She went to join the children in looking for you, but it seems that they found you first," said her uncle. "No matter. We'll all be gathered together soon." He seemed nervous.

Her aunt spoke, sounding rushed, with a quaver in her voice. "We make speeches as a matter of course," she started. After a breath, she continued, "I… we want to speak simply now, from the heart, to you." Primrose looked at Thomas.

He gave an encouraging nod, Elsa saw with growing apprehension. When adult had conferences in advance to prepare themselves, it meant something serious. Their nervousness made Elsa nervous. She made herself show a calm face. "What is it?" she asked.

"You have been," Primrose went on, her eyes aglow, "like our own daughter for these four years. And today…" she seemed to lose her voice. She turned a beseeching expression to Thomas.

"Today, the people of Corona looked to you," King Thomas announced. "I have seen the people of our kingdom call you their own." His tone softened. A soft look filled his eyes. "You are my niece by blood, Elsa," he said. "We haven't forgotten that you are the crown princess of Arendelle, but your blood has a right here in Corona, as well."

"For tonight," Primrose said, "Corona needs its princess." She touched the top of the decorate box. Thomas lifted it against his broad chest, opened the lid, and turned the opening toward his queen. Primrose reached in and removed the tiara.

Elsa kept her face still, but inside, she cringed away. She didn't deserve to wear the tiara. She wasn't Corona's princess. And yet… it was a beautiful thing, too beautiful not to want. Three teardrop diamonds, each bigger than her palm, sparkled from a setting of blue topaz and white pearls clustered like flowers, lotus-pink sapphires, and yellow gold. Only the king's and queen's crowns exceeded it in rare jewels.

"We would like you to wear it," Thomas said, "tonight, for our guests, and for our people." He placed the box down on a footstool behind him.

Primrose raised the tiara. She stepped close to Elsa, and Elsa held still. The Queen of Corona settled Rapunzel's tiara in place, tucking in Elsa's hair as needed. Primrose hugged Elsa briefly before stepping away. Her eyes were wide, and she had an odd smile, as she looked at Elsa.

King Thomas, too, stared at Elsa for a long time before he broke the silence. "Elsa, my niece," he said in a soft, intense voice, "if we do not recover our Rapunzel… you are the heir of Corona." He continued before Elsa could ask a question. "We have not given up hope in Rapunzel. But we have no other children, and in your time here, you have become a leader for our people. We are in no hurry to stop being king and queen," he said with a smile. "No one is in a rush to make you queen of either domain."

The weight of the tiara, as little as it was, pressed down on Elsa. Yet, she knew how splendid it would look. She turned away from her uncle and aunt to glide toward a window, where the reflected light made a mirror of the glass. Against her white hair, the three large diamonds made her think of the petals of a crocus. The gems that shined as blue as her eyes glimmered like the ice of a frozen lake. She took a long breath, swallowing the knot in her throat. She tipped up her head, forcing the press of tears back.

ooo

Applause greeted her when she entered the ballroom side-by-side with the king and queen. The musicians, a quintet that had been playing a light melody, struck their instruments with new energy to begin a vivacious tune. The entrance of the king, queen, and princess was a signal for the celebration to begin in earnest.

While other guests paired off, a group that included Hans approached the monarchs and Elsa. King Thomas made the introductions between Elsa and the two other Southern Isles princes, Johan and Holger. "And young Hans, whom you have already met," said the king. Thomas and Primrose both seemed to expect something from Elsa.

Hans made a deep bow with more grace and flair than his brothers had shown. He was neatly attired in dark blue and dove gray, a different suit that showed less evidence of resizing. The colors suited his light complexion and auburn hair. His manner was pleasant, and his smile just wide enough to appear sincerely bashful.

Elsa stared at his hands.

He wore gloves. Close fitting, white gloves covered his hands. The sight of them sent a crawling feeling up her spine. She looked up; their eyes met. His irises were an earthy green hue, set off by long eyelashes. If she had not known better, she could have believed that the youthful innocence they presented was genuine.

"May I have this dance, Princess?" he asked. His voice was gentle, far different from the sound it had had when he had called her a peasant.

"No!" said Elsa. She ignored everyone's pause of surprise. "That is," she said, recovering, "I would like to have the first dance with King Thomas." She wrapped her small hand around her uncle's forearm and squeezed, hoping he would go along.

Prince Johan turned to Queen Primrose. "Then perhaps, I may have the honor of a dance with the queen," he offered.

"Oh! Well," Primrose answered. She exchanged a quick glance with Thomas. "Shall we?"

Thus, they paired off for the grand march with the king and Elsa leading, followed by the queen and the bearded Southern Isles prince. The first dance was a stately promenade with slow, elegant turns and the lines of gentlemen and ladies weaving through each other until they each matched with their original partner again. Elsa saw Kay and Gerte, and even old Mother Gartner, following in the dance. One of the other guests was pleased to pair with Hans.

The stately dances, where paired partners rarely touched more than fingertips as they strode the classic steps, gave way at last to cordial folk dances. At first, the musicians played slower tunes. With each new song, they increased the tempo of the music. At the beginning of a lively circle dance, King Thomas sat out, although Queen Primrose kicked up her feet as merrily as the younger dancers. Kay maneuvered to be beside Elsa, so while the dance was not precisely paired, he danced as much with Elsa as with Gerte.

Elsa liked her friend's simple enthusiasm. He unabashedly stomped his feet, slapped his knees, and whooped with the other Corona men as they danced her part of the country dance. The visiting princes sat the out for the complicated steps. Elsa circled and twirled with the other girls. Gerte, too - Elsa thought - seemed to be enjoying the dancing as much as Kay. Elsa felt a twinge of envy at how free to enjoy the moment they both seemed.

Elsa stepped out of the circle at the next dance, taking the time to catch her breath. To her chagrin, Hans made a beeline for where she stood. She saw him almost too late. Quickly, she moved around the opposite side of the room, ending up beside her Aunt Primrose.

Primrose knew exactly what Elsa was doing. "Elsa," she admonished the girl, "it's only a dance. Dance with the boy. He's our guest." When Elsa tried to leave, Primrose stayed her with a light touch on Elsa's shoulder.

It was enough allow Hans to catch up. "Princess Elsa," he said, showing teeth in his smile. "Perhaps I could have the next dance?"

Primrose cast Elsa a look that clearly said, "Go on."

"Very well," Elsa acquiesced. "We will dance together."

Hans bowed. He extended a gloved hand to take Elsa's hand and led her to the middle of the room. Elsa couldn't bear to put her hand into his, even with the layer of her own satin gloves between them. Instead, she put the tips of her fingers lightly onto his wrist. He would have no polite option but to accept the restrained contact.

As they moved toward the center, the musicians changed. The new group began with a more romantic air. When Elsa heard the first lilting notes of the Landler, she desperately hoped that Hans would not know the couples dance, and therefore have to sit out until a less intimate dance began. Unfortunately for her, he knew exactly the stance to begin, indicating that he did know it.

She had no choice but to dance with him to the Landler in the more recent style, a slow, romantic repetition of turns and near embraces. The steps were gliding and elegant. In each pose of the dance, their hands touched: interwoven fingertips, grasped hands, palm to palm.

His gloves seemed like a mockery of her own. She knew that her dress gloves would not hold back her ice magic if it rose up in her. His gloves were like the invisible mask he wore. He presented himself hidden, obscuring his true nature.

"Well, _Princess_," he murmured at the part of the dancing when he stood at her back with arms around her, "you are certainly full of surprises."

She kept her posture rigid. Her movements were precise and without feeling. "I don't know what you mean," she answered in arched tones as she stepped away for the turns.

"I know you do," Hans answered, his voice pitched only for Elsa to hear. "Why else the… chilly… attitude?" He smiled as if delighted with his play on words.

"You mean," they stepped into toward each other, fingers linked, "why haven't I said anything about your boorish conduct?"

Hans actually laughed aloud, though he quickly reduced the bark of laughter to a chuckle that made it seem he was merely enjoying his partner's wit. "Don't pretend, Princess. You're a danger, and I know it. But only I know… for now," he said. "You should be nice to me."

Elsa felt a jolt of fear, made worse by the position of dancing shoulder to shoulder as they spun together in a circle. Hans's face was so close that she could feel his breath pass over her cheek. She didn't reply. The dance was almost over. She could suffer through the last of it in silence.

Or at least, she thought she could. But when the last part of the dance put her closely face-to-face with him while his arm was around her waist, she couldn't sustain another moment. She pulled away from him and rushed out of the room without looking back.

She could hear him following behind her. He even called out to her, in a voice pitched to garner pity, "Princess Elsa, wait!"

She turned on him once they were out in the corridor, out of earshot of the gathering. "Stop," she ordered him. "Don't follow me." She stood her ground.

"Or what?" Hans pulled at the fingers of his gloves, freeing his hands from their concealment. "Really, Elsa," he said, his voice purring. "I've been very clear. Don't you get how this works? I keep your secret," he stepped close and ran his bare fingers along one of her eyebrows, "and you give me a reason to."

A woman's voice suddenly echoed against the walls, making both Hans and Elsa jump. "Dear, dear!" old Mother Gartner tutted. "You two can't be out here unchaperoned!"

Elsa took the opportunity to step away from Hans. Hans collected himself. He pulled his gloves back on as he turned to face the matron. "On my word as a gentleman," he blustered, "we were conversing away from the noise. I apologize for any appearance of impropriety and take full blame."

"Nonsense, young man," Mother Gartner scolded. "You should know better. Now hurry back where your brothers can keep an eye on you," she said.

Sincere chagrin crossed Hans's face for a moment before it was replaced by the posturing of embarrassment. He cast Elsa one last sharp glance before obeying Mother Gartner.

"Now," the old woman said to Elsa in a kindly voice, "did you come out here for a breath of air?"

"I did," Elsa replied with gratitude.

"Then we should find a room with a fresh breeze. Shall we walk?" Together, they walked for a few minutes further away from the music and dancing, until Mother Gartner spotted a padded bench and sat down without preamble. "Why don't you go on ahead?" the woman suggested. "You can come fetch me when you're done with your constitutional."

Elsa looked at the old woman for a long moment. The old woman regarded her back with watery blue eyes and a certain wisdom. "Thank you," Elsa said to her.

Elsa walked away, grateful for the freedom to be alone. She didn't know how Mother Gartner could know her mind better than she did herself. Elsa took a side corridor, where she could take a flight of servants stairs up to the solarium. It was away from the ballroom and the great hall where servants bustled to prepare for the commencement of feasting.

She opened the French doors to the small balcony outside. With all the lights, it was too bright for her, and she retreated back inside where the room was diminished with soft shadows. She left the room open to the autumn air and sat down on in one of the big chairs.

She wondered if she could tell anyone about Hans. If she did, wouldn't he reveal her secret, too? How bad would it be if she agreed to his terms?

For the second time that evening, she didn't allow her tears to run. She didn't dare weep. Tears could shatter the thin defenses she felt she had left.

ooo


	13. I Know You Mean Well, But Leave Me Be

Flynn could not resist a party, and Corona's townsfolk were in full party mode. He witnessed actual dancing happening on the tops of roofs. In spite of a lot of weird damage to the port town, the crowds were merry without being unruly, and there wasn't even a guard in sight. Flynn actually felt a little bad about picking pockets when there was no real challenge to it.

For fun, he even put a few things back into different pockets. Some people were going to wake up, after daybreak, with hangovers and unfamiliar lacey things in their pockets. The best fun came from switching out wine bottles for different ones he had filled with water, without the carousers catching him at it. Flynn sampled the stolen wine, but poured most of it into a pig trough.

"Isn't it a little early for Harvest Fair?" he asked a group of children who were up long past their bedtime. They just laughed at him and ran on.

Not until he stopped to watch a group of street performers did Flynn get a hint at the cause of the festivities. Using a series of repurposed costumes, the thespians told a story of a white-haired princess who was spirited away by a terrible beast. The princess broke the spell on the monster, turning him back into a prince.

And they lived happily ever after.

Flynn swiped a beer and bite to eat, and wandered on. He was pretty confident that Princess Elsa hadn't actually become that particular storybook princess, but at least he had gleaned that she was central to the goings-on. And from eavesdropping on conversations, he had indication that some truth existed to the reports of an enchanted beast. Something had ripped through the town that day, causing havoc. The biggest storm that Flynn had ever witnessed hadn't torn up the town as badly.

He ingratiated himself with a group of beer keg philosophers and turned the conversation to current events with a few well-placed comments. Elsa was being called the Champion of Corona, Flynn learned. The young princess had somehow saved the day, destroying some kind of giant that the guard had been unable to stop. Up at the castle, a ball and grand feast were ongoing in her honor.

Corona's castle beckoned. Up he went - not just up the hill. Sneaking past the crowd around the castle doors, he found a dark spot and a window that helped him scale the wall to an upper level ledge. From there he used the decorative stonework to climb further. He went in through an open window, sneaked past the castle staff bustling through the corridors, went back out a different window, and ran along a rooftop until he heard music.

If she was dancing the night away, she was probably just fine, he tried to convince himself. A little thing like nearly getting taken by two big guys couldn't have shaken her up too much. He tried to tell himself that he didn't have to feel guilty.

He was just starting to wonder how he was going to find the princess alone when he heard running, coming from indoor, and then a murmur of voices. He crept along the rooftop until he found a window that showed him the people inside: an old lady and Princess Elsa. Elsa left the old woman sitting on a bench and went off by herself.

Flynn looked around for another way in. Up ahead was the stone railing of a terrace or balcony. He leaped up, got a firm grip on the railing, and pulled himself up without more effort than expected. With the castle so well lighted, it was hard to find shadows to skulk in. He hurried to the darkest part of the balcony. He checked the windowed doors, found one of them open, and slipped into the empty room. He made his way around the edge of the room where the shadows were deepest.

His hand was on the knob of the inner door when he heard a girls voice say, "Flynn?"

He spun around, ready to dash across the room to the open door if needed. In the same split second, he also registered the figure curled up in one of the oversized armchairs. She had been sitting so still, hidden by the angle of the chair back, that he hadn't seen her.

She looked small and fragile. Flynn immediately felt that he was doing the right thing to find and check on her.

"What are you doing here?" she asked.

Her blue eyes looked bluer because of her finery. In the darkness of the room, the tiara on her head almost glowed. Flynn had never seen that many jewels all in one place, or any as large as the center stones. Elsa had to be wearing the crown of the lost princess.

"I thought you didn't like flower crowns," he commented to laugh off his avarice. He made a gesture at her head.

Her hands flew up and touched the jeweled tiara she wore. Belatedly, she must have remembered when he had topped her head with a crown of flowers he had lifted during the lantern festival, years ago. After a moment, she answered his comment. "Not stolen ones."

Her gave her a slow smirk, eyebrows raised. "That one isn't?" A vision of her throwing ice daggers at the Stabbingtons flashed in his memory. Immediately, he raised his hands, palm outward, in a gesture of surrender. "Don't get mad!"

Instead of becoming angry, Elsa's face became sadder. "You saw everything," she said to him in a small voice. "What I did, yesterday, to those men you were with."

"I didn't want anything to do with that," Flynn told her. "When you stopped on the road - and by the way, never do that - I didn't know who you were, at first. A cute rich girl on a fine horse. But that white hair of yours stands out. I remembered the little empress who ordered the castle guards to let me go."

"Empress," the girl echoed with a sad laugh. "I don't even want to be a princess. Or queen." She unfolded from the chair, enough to put her feet down on the ground. Flynn hadn't realized that she had had them tucked under her. She was wearing a lot of dress, lots of pale blue cloth and sparkles.

She twisted the fingers of her satin gloves. "You don't seem afraid of me. Or disgusted," she said. "You tried to help me, didn't you?"

"I did. And I want to make sure you're alright."

She looked confused. "That I'm alright?" she echoed. She smiled a humorless smile. "You saw what I did!"

Flynn became uncomfortable. "Um. Well." He tapped his fingers against his legs, feeling out of his element. "Your, um, magical qualities. I-I can't say I expected that. I mean, you… you… made pointy things out of nothing."

"Ice," she said, softly. She was giving him a look of serious contemplation. "I-I make ice and snow."

Flynn wanted to squirm under her stare. "Nice dress," he said, to lighten the mood. "Sparkly."

"How did you get in here… up here?" Elsa asked. She straightened up in her seat. A frown creasing her forehead, she asked, "Are you stealing from the _castle_?" She moved out of the chair, her body tensed. "Is the rest of your _thieves band_ here?"

Flynn was quick to deny the accusation. "No, no! It's just me. I'm on my own."

"Is it?"

"Yes. It's just me. I'm alone. If it makes you feel better, the others cleared out. They're not even in the kingdom anymore." Flynn casually moved into a better position for a quick escape.

"All of them?"

"Yeah. I mean, I'm not sure about the old woman and the girl. But the big guys..." He saw Elsa stiffen. He softened his voice. "They're gone."

"I want that to be true," Elsa said. She looked at the floor as if she thought was going to collapse. She put her hand on a nearby chairback.

"You can believe it. It's true," Flynn answered. He asked, "Are you alright, Princess?"

She looked back up, at him. "What?"

He took a step toward her, and when she cringed, he felt awful. He felt a surge of protectiveness, too, that he realized shouldn't be unexpected. He was, after all, already risking arrest just to check on the girl.

He turned the chair she had been originally sitting in and wordlessly indicated that she should sit back down. She sat down, but her eyes remained suspicious of him. "Why are you really here?" she asked.

Flynn took a chair nearby and turned it around so that he could sit down facing her. He said nothing for a minute. Then, he cracked a smile. "I can't resist a party," he answered. He made himself more comfortable in the seat.

"You're not at the party," Elsa countered.

"Neither are you," Flynn replied. "Why aren't you at your party, Sparkles?"

She boggled at Flynn's appellation of her. "Did you just call me 'Sparkles'?" she asked, avoiding his question. She sprang up and crossed the room. She stopped at the open doorway to the balcony. There, she stood with her arms crossed over her chest. She looked back over her shoulder at Flynn.

"How did you decide to run away?" she asked him. "How did you know where to go, once you'd decided?"

"I went where my feet took me," he said. He lounged back, crossing his legs as he took a relaxed pose. "Anyway, I didn't run away. Adventure called me, and I ran toward freedom. Nothing held me back." He shrugged.

"Wasn't there anyone you cared about, at the orphanage? Didn't you have any friends?"

Flynn became thoughtful. He was tempted to say that _Eugene Fitzherbert_ had been a lonely kid. "You can't let anyone tangle you up," he decided to say.

"You could be so much more than a thief," Elsa said.

"I am more than a thief," Flynn replied, laughing. "I'm terrific at a lot of things. One thing about me doesn't define all of me." He crossed his arms. "I like who I am."

"I'm good at a lot of things, too," said Elsa. She didn't announce it with the same pride Flynn had. She looked at her gloved hands. "I don't want any of this," she confessed in a small voice. "If only I could go far enough away from everything…"

"You don't want to run away," Flynn said. He uncrossed his legs and straightened up."From all this? Wealth, nice clothes… family. You live in a castle!"

"Why are you getting worked up about it?" Elsa's voice snapped, and her eyes flashed outrage. "You ran away from who you were!"

Flynn couldn't believe it. "You're telling me you want to run away from what you are? You're a princess! You can be whoever you want. No one can make you do something you don't want to do." He looked at the ground, making a performance of controlling his outburst so that she would get that it really bothered him. He had been about her age when he ran away, and it hadn't been easy, but he hadn't been running away from easy, either. "Anyway, if they try," he said, standing up and forcing a light laugh, "you can," he made a gesture like Elsa casting out her ice magic, "do that ice thing."

His flippant joke had the opposite affect of humor on Elsa. She covered her mouth, stifling what sounded like a choked sob. She turned away and curled into herself.

"Woah, woah! No crying," Flynn said, stepping toward her. Tentatively, he reached toward her shoulder.

"Leave me be, Flynn," said Elsa. "Please go." She pulled at her dampened gloves and stared out at nothing.

Flynn held his hands outward at his sides. "I was just leaving," he said.

"If you stay here, you'll be caught by the guard. You've risked yourself enough." She glanced his way.

His face relaxed into a small smile. "Until we meet again, Sparkles. Uh, Your Highness, I mean."

"I'd rather just be Elsa," she told him.

He gave her a salute and a bow. "Until we meet again, then, Elsa. Farewell." With a theatrical flourish, he exited via the balcony.

ooo


	14. Just Stay Away & You'll Be Safe from Me

She saw him climb over the railing, then heard the light sound of his boots against roof shingles. She could follow after him. Not as she was dressed, of course, but her room wasn't far. Change her name, maybe even dye her hair a darker color. Pretend to be someone else.

Flynn might not let her follow him, not with the illusions he had about her privileges. Why would she want to go with him, anyway? She wouldn't live as he did, an "adventurer," as he said. She was better on her own.

She wondered if she even could run away, as Flynn had done. Her life wouldn't simply let her go. The crown on her head weighed heavily, and so did the crown she was meant to wear one day. If she ran… it would be over the edge of the world. Over the edge of a chasm and into the dark.

_Pretend to be someone else._

She was already pretending. Fosterage rarely lasted more than five years. Once, she wished always for the call to go home; now she dreaded the moment of truth it would bring. Only she knew that she would abdicate the crown of Arendelle, since if she were to return, she would put all of Arendelle in danger. Better to give Anna both the crown and safety. Tonight she wore Rapunzel's tiara, play acting the princess for her aunt, uncle, and all of Corona.

What role would Hans of Southern Isles want for her to play? An arrangement to use her influence on Corona's _and_ Arendelle's trade agreements would be strategic. Or could he be reaching for a larger prize?

Could he…

be thinking… to improve his status…

by marriage?

Elsa gasped for a breath. She knew how politics worked between kingdoms, yet the thought of marriage still shocked her. Worse, marriage to a prince so far down the line of succession that he would bring nothing to the union. She couldn't imagine herself married, or even betrothed! Nevermind that it wasn't at all strange for a girl who had already started her courses to be considering her marriage-bed prospects.

She didn't want any prospects! She didn't want… that. And certainly not with a blackguard such as Hans! If she had to marry someone, it could at least be someone she might pretend to want!

_Pretend..._

Hans was a monster, pretending to be a prince. He enjoyed threatening to expose her secret, but she knew his true nature. She could pretend at least as well as he did. Better, she imagined. She had so much practice. What she hid always fought to be exposed.

She paced back and forth while focusing her thoughts back to the situation at hand. The power that Hans had over her was the secret of her ice powers, yet he had been the only witness that time. Flynn hadn't given any indication that he would tell her secret, and the other bandits were no longer in the kingdom, he had said.

"Ugh!" she growled to herself. Hans threatened her. He threatened her because he wanted power over her, which he could not have unless she remained afraid of him.

_Be someone else._

If she were unafraid of him, he would not have power over her. She _was_ afraid. However, she could pretend not to be. She could pretend that the secret he held could not harm her. In what scenario would that be true? Suppose Hans thought he would not be believed, or that he would face negative consequences for telling her secret?

She finished pulling her satin gloves off the rest of the way. They were damp from when she had sobbed into them. Her hands felt better, out of them. She folded them up and carried them with her as she went down the stairs, heading back to the ball.

Mother Gartner still waited in the corridor. She sat on the bench in a patient pose. When Elsa approach, the elderly matron slowly rose to her feet. Giving her assistance, Elsa put her gloves down on the bench. She chose to leave them there when she and Mother Gartner walked away.

"You were gone quite a while," Mother Gartner commented without judgment. "We may have missed all but the last dance."

Elsa braced herself. She would continue as if she were unafraid. "I feel better now," she lied.

ooo

She strode back into the ballroom with her lips positioned in a confident smile. While Mother Gartner moved toward a group of chatting adults, Elsa spotted Hans and made her path angle toward him. He was holding court with a small group of other youths that included her friends. Seeing his chummy manner with Kay, she had to fight to keep the plaster smile on her face. That contemptible Hans didn't merit standing in Kay's shadow. Hans must have noted Kay's attention shift. The prince's smile on turning to see Elsa had a quality of gloating satisfaction.

Kay's smile, when he saw Elsa approaching, was genuine, however. He quickly stepped away from the others and intercepted Elsa. "I hoped that I could still have that dance with you," he greeted her. "May I?"

The tune was ending. To dance with Kay would be a short detour from her intentions, but she worried that she would lose her resolve. "I hope you will forgive me, Kay," she said. She glanced at Gerte, still standing with the others, who had a bereft look dimming the roses of her young face. Elsa could, at least, make Gerte happier. "I should not have promised you anything. I'm expected to dance with Prince Hans."

"Oh." Doing a bad job of hiding his disappointment, he gave her a little nod. "A prince for a princess. I understand." Mustering a smile, he added, "Of course I forgive you, Princess Elsa."

"Thank you, Kay." She swept away from him, quickly moving toward Hans as the next musical number began. Hans had stepped away from the others.

"I see you've changed your mind," a pleased Hans said. He took her hand as a given.

Elsa suppressed her revulsion. His kid leather gloves were soft skin against her bare hands. "Shall we dance?" she asked him.

The musicians were playing a piece to accompany a face-to-face couples dance, similar to the Landler, called the waltzer. It was very new, but Elsa knew it, since - like the Landler - the dance's origins were local.

The smile on Han's face faltered. "I don't know this one," he told her breezily. "Why don't we talk somewhere privately? The moon is beautiful tonight."

"It's quite easy to learn the dance," Elsa insisted. "Three beats to a measure."

Elsa stepped into Hans and took his right hand, which she pulled around her waist and pressed above the small of her back. Nonplussed, yet not flustered, Hans did not resist. She took his left hand in her right, and wrapped her right hand and arm around his right shoulder.

"Like this," she said. Though positioned to follow, she pushed and pulled on him as she led the steps of the waltzer. His feet stepped on hers more than once at first, though he adapted quickly.

Because of the dance style or because of fatigue, fewer dancers joined them on the floor. The greater distance between couples made it easier to speak without the possibility of being overheard.

Hans turned his face toward Elsa's. She compared the green of his irises to the muck of algae growing around a stagnant pond. He pulled her as close as propriety allowed. "We look good together," he said in a low voice. "You made the right decision."

"I know I have," Elsa replied. She changed her language to the language spoken in both Arendelle and Southern Isles. "So that we understand each other clearly, let me speak in our common language." The sound of the words gave her strength. She wrote to Anna in their language, except when helping her practice others, but she had become accustomed to hearing her own voice in the language of Corona.

Hans switched his language, too. "I certainly prefer it." His voice sounded more genteel in his native tongue. "And this dance. I like it, too."

"When you and your brothers leave Corona at first light tomorrow, you can take this lesson with you. As a token, from me."

"Oh, I don't know that I have to leave," Hans responded. "Not so quickly. My brothers can go on ahead of me. They have some business that can't be delayed longer."

"You'll leave tomorrow," Elsa said as they twirled through a fast turn, "or I'll see that you are tossed into the dungeons."

"What?" Hans hissed with a warning tone.

"You assaulted a princess. Have you forgotten? I can have you hanged, for that. Imprisonment would be a mercy."

Hans struggled to hide a nasty expression. "Have _you_ forgotten? They'll do worse to you when I tell them you do magic. You won't be any kind of princess once they know your secret. Witches are rolled in barrels filled with salt and nails. They're burned with hot iron shoes." His manner became intense as he enumerated the possible tortures. "I'm sure you've heard the stories. If you think a candle burn hurts, imagine that agony." As another couple danced close, he smiled and nodded at them. Then he maneuvered out of earshot with the spinning of their dance steps. "Don't put yourself in peril, _Princess, _by being a little fool."

Elsa took a breath, bracing herself. "It's not a secret," she lied. "My father and mother, and my uncle and aunt, know. I'm the crown princess of Arendelle and the champion of Corona." Their dancing came to a stop a moment after the music. "I hold your dagger, Prince Hans. Proof that you attacked me. Your testimony is no proof, and if you speak of sorcery, it will be considered an overture of war by Southern Isles."

Hans looked as if he had been slapped in the face. He stepped back from Elsa, looking her up and down. He belatedly released her hand and took his touch off her waist. His eyes narrowed. Very quietly, he said, "When you look in a mirror, you will always see the monster you are."

Stung, she pretended not to have heard him. "Did you like the dance? The music was from a scene in the Italian opera, _Una Cosa Rara,_ by Vicente Martin y Soler. The opera's name refers to beauty and honor together. _Una Cosa Rara_: 'a rare thing.'" She stood a long moment to collect herself. Then, as she stepped past Hans walking away, she told him, "I could freeze your heart and no one would notice."

He didn't follow her.

Once the feast was served, she could hardly even put food in her mouth. She remained shaken from challenging Hans. She worried that he would call her bluff. It was true that she could produce the dagger that she had taken from him as evidence, but if he told anyone about her ice power… she couldn't bear to think of it.

Hans and his brothers sat at King Thomas and Queen Primrose's table. It was small relief that the Southern Isle princes were placed on the far side of Queen Primrose, while Elsa sat at King Thomas's side; Elsa felt as if her every move was watched, if not by Hans, then by the room full of guests. Knowing that someone in the kitchen would enjoy a fine dinner of her unwanted meal, she let the servants fill her plate, then carry away the untasted food.

Instead of eating the food in front of her, she thought about her future as an exile. She couldn't continue, she felt, in the place of Corona's princess. Confronting Hans had given her a small boost of focus to consider what she wanted. Talking to Flynn had seeded the thought of what she would do, if she were not a princess, to find her freedom. She might still throw herself into a ravine, but while she still had other options, she could save that one escape as a secret comfort. For once, she would have a secret that only she knew.

The dinner ended somewhat abruptly, at least for the royal family, when the captain of the guard brought news. He entered the hall in the company of one of his messengers, his arm still bound because of his damaged shoulder: the actual injury he sustained from being knocked off his horse by the ice monster. Elsa felt glad that she had eaten nothing; she felt sicker upon again seeing the harm she had done to the captain.

What he had to tell the king required privacy. King Thomas rose and led his guardsmen out of the dining hall to conduct their business away from the guests.

ooo

Once they were in the hallway, heading toward the king's chamber, the captain apologized to King Thomas for the interruption, then told him, "The villains have been caught, Your Highness. They were found over the Qamar border, apparently making arrangements to flee to Agrabah. Qamar is extraditing them to us. The bandits will be in our custody by dawn."

"The whole band?" King Thomas inquired. He led the group to his audience chamber.

"Two brutes, only: the 'Stabbington Brothers', as they are known. They will say nothing of their fellow thieves."

King Thomas's face became grim. "In time, they will," he said. "I'll have everything they know out of them."

ooo

After bidding goodnight to the honored guests, Queen Primrose also left the table. Elsa took the opportunity to escape, following after the queen. She overtook her before Queen Primrose had gone past the first turning of the corridor. She stopped her and asked for the meeting she needed with Queen Primrose and King Thomas.

Elsa and Primrose crossed paths with the captain of the guard and the messenger at the doorway to the King's audience chamber. The men bowed to the royal ladies, then proceeded on their way with haste.

King Thomas stood with his arms crossed over his broad chest, deep in thought with his head bowed. The king straightened up as his wife and niece entered the room. Primrose shut the door behind them. Thomas's expression lightened from a grim contemplation as they entered his company.

Queen Primrose held his gaze. "No word… ?" she asked.

He shook his head. "None," he answered.

Elsa took the opportunity, before the meeting turned to other things, to cement her uncle's and aunt's attention. With care, she began to remove the jeweled tiara from her head. When the metalwork caught on the strands of her hair, Queen Primrose reached to help her.

"You don't have to take it off now, Elsa," she said. "Let the maids take it out when they brush out your hair before you sleep."

"It's not mine to wear," Elsa stated. She extricated the tiara and put it in her uncle's hands. "Uncle Thomas, Aunt Primrose, I can't stand in my cousin's place. Let me instead," she rushed on, "pledge all my abilities to the search for her. Give me Maximus. Let me ride with the guard. I am skilled, and I have strength. Let me do this, at least, until Arendelle calls me home."

King Thomas stopped his own protest and considered her plea. "A year, at most, until you are recalled to Arendelle," he mused.

"It's too dangerous," Primrose worried, but even she seemed to consider.

"Am I not Corona's champion?" Elsa countered. She felt like fraud, but she had to win her desire.

King Thomas and Queen Primrose shared another one of their wordless communications. Elsa saw the look, but couldn't interpret the meaning.

"Let me give it some thought," the king started.

"Uncle -" Elsa began to plead. She stopped when King Thomas lifted his hand in a gesture for her patience.

"I'll make my decision soon enough," he said kindly. "My dear niece. At the moment, however, is a matter of pressing importance. " He looked around the room. "I would prefer we speak of it in a better setting."

Elsa felt a pulse of hope when, on the way to King Thomas's personal study, they left Rapunzel's tiara back in its box, ready to be stored until the next formal occasion. They were all preoccupied, however, and she wasn't the only one not to notice that they left the jeweled tiara unguarded.

Thomas's study was appropriate for meetings on matters related to them as a family, as opposed to discussions about the kingdom. It was an oasis from the grandeur of the castle, filled with sentimental objects. Many of Elsa's early artwork graced the walls and shelves. A pre-wedding portrait of Primrose and several small paintings of baby Rapunzel filled a space directly across from his writing desk.

He gestured for Elsa and Primrose to choose seats. As usual, they went to the same chairs, Elsa to an armchair (that could recline) and Primrose to a settee. On other occasions, she had taken advantage of being able to lie down or lounge in recline.

Thomas paused before he took his own seat, in a massive chair that suited his frame. "The men who tried to take Elsa have been caught," he said, all in one great sigh. "Matters of justice are rarely so grave in our kingdom, but I confess that my rage is clouding my judgment." He sat down. "I am concerned about your feelings upon hearing this news, Elsa. Will you be able to confront these villains? If the strain it too great, I would spare you any contact with the matter entirely."

Elsa could have screamed. She continued to pretend that all was well and kept her countenance placid. She had only just won a shaky victory against Hans, and now two others who had seen her ice magic, two she had thought gone and to be forgotten, would be in a position to tell her secret. She could take her uncle's offer, but if she did, she would show herself too weak for her earlier request to ride with the guard.

She made herself speak. "Justice should never be an easy decision, Uncle. I am willing to do what is needed."

Primrose interjected, "We must discover what they know."

"We conjecture that these men may know something of our Rapunzel's abduction," Thomas explained to Elsa. "Strong methods of interrogation may be in order."

"You mean… torture, don't you?" Elsa asked, giving thanks that she had not eaten anything at dinner because of the way her stomach twisted. Under torture, even the threat of it, the bandits would certainly give her secret away.

"We have to use what is necessary," said Primrose. "There are poisons that will cause a man to speak without censor. They cause great pain when withheld, after the first dosage. However, ultimately these prisoners will go to the hangman."

"I have also been given to understand that one of the ruffians has been partially blinded. A promise of medical care can be a positive inducement. If it should turn out that these men are not as villainous as we perceive before all evidence is gathered, we may find ways to attain their co-operation." King Thomas was not a man of rages. Elsa knew he would prefer a way without violence. "They will be in the dungeon by morning. I would like to begin questioning them as the first order of business, tomorrow."

Queen Primrose nodded. "I will have our schedule cleared," she said. "Elsa, you may do the same, but at first, we will only need you to testify that the correct persons have been captured." She confirmed her statement with King Thomas via a look.

Elsa could only nod. She knew there would be no chance of sleep for her this night, anticipating the next day to come.

ooo


	15. Every One of Them's Bad Except You

In no hurry to leave, Flynn gave himself a little tour of the castle. He even nabbed a full plate of food being carried away to the scullery with the dirty dishes from the feast. He found an empty room - no hidden princess, this time - to enjoy his meal before finishing his exploring.

There was nothing wrong with the food. It looked like it hadn't even been tasted. Thanking his luck and the pickiness of rich people, Flynn chowed down on a meal literally fit for a king. Then he went exploring.

"I wouldn't mind living _here_," he murmured to himself as he toured, ducking away to hide once in a while when someone passed down a nearby corridor. It seemed that while the castle was full of people, they were gathered in one of three places: the banquet hall, the kitchens, or outside around the castle.

The castle had a lot of guest bedrooms and guest suites. He dared to poke around what investigation showed was an unoccupied set of rooms. The bed was empty, but Flynn found folded blankets and a featherbed stored in a wardrobe that smelled like lavender.

The meal, a little rich and heavy, was making him sleepy, and the lump of clean bedding looked very, very attractive. He crawled into the closet and pulled the door shut behind him. He knew his boots were dirty, but he didn't feel guilty about snuggling into the featherbed. Eugene might have felt guilty, but not Flynn. He took a cat nap in the closet.

He woke up not knowing it was several hours later, but suspecting that he'd slept longer than he intended. The bedding had been too comfortable. Before climbing out of the wardrobe, he paused to listen for people, then quietly swung the door open a crack. It was still dim in the room, brightened only by the lights on the outside of the castle refracting through a high window. The window looked too narrow to squeeze out through, so even though Flynn felt as if he was pushing his luck, he had to go back out through the castle.

He did a lot more hiding from passers-by than he had earlier. The festivities must have concluded. The guests were going home. Actually, as he listened in on conversations, these folks seemed to be the last of the guests going home. He kept his eyes open for a clock. When he saw the actual time - nearly morning - he couldn't believe it.

On the up side, he considered, it had been the best sleep he'd had in ages. He felt better than ever. If a featherbed weren't so large, he would have gone back to steal it.

He saw a crowd at the castle entrance and thought he could sneak out with them, but as he got closer, he saw that they were blocked from leaving by a procession of helmed heads and armored bodies. The curious crowd was watching the castle guard leading the Stabbington brothers, both of them in manacles, toward a part of the castle that Flynn could guess held the dungeons.

He backed up and went looking for a safer exit.

Taking the turnings that he could without being spotted, he stayed as close as possible to outer walls. The castle, made of ancient buildings, towers, and turrets connected as needed by newer architecture, continually funneled him toward the most frequently used spaces. He ended up, in fact, in the throne room, a big room with a vaulted ceiling and no other obvious ways out. Floor-to-ceiling drapes covered grand stained-glass windows that did not open. He ran across the glossy floor to the thrones for the king and queen. There was always a service door somewhere; behind the thrones seemed as likely a place as any.

Not a service door, but a vault door hid behind the wall hangings. It was locked. But on one of the sumptuous royal chairs, a box had been left, as if forgotten. Inlaid with gleaming mother-of-pearl, the hardwood box looked like it would fetch a price of at least a couple of gold pieces.

He opened it, naturally. Empty, it was worth stealing, but in case it happened to hold any documents, Flynn had the sense to leave those behind. When he saw what was inside, he stopped breathing for a solid quarter minute.

He could almost _feel_ the light playing across his face as it reflected from the diamonds of the tiara. The tiara of the Lost Princess. The tiara that had been on Elsa's head. A thin, white strand still wound around the prongs of one of the dawn pink jewels.

Flynn's covetousness almost lost the battle with his fear. It was too great of an opportunity to pass. Clearly, luck wanted him to take the tiara. "I'll be doing her a favor," he whispered to himself, mesmerized by the play of light through the gemstones. "She hates flower crowns." His hands shook. His heartbeat thundered in his ears. With the jewels from the tiara, he could buy the rest of his life.

To steal it was worth his life, if he were caught. They would probably borrow punishments from other kingdoms, like cutting off his hands or his nose, before he went under the axe. They might use a blunt axe.

He couldn't put the box down. He almost couldn't make himself close the lid on the shining glory of gold and gems. When he did, he felt a rush better than any since he'd run away to freedom.

Then, energized by the raised stakes on his adventure, he continued sneaking his way out of the castle, his prize under one arm. With it in his possession, taking a shortcut through the servants' areas wouldn't be any less dangerous than moving through the main parts of the castle. One of the many rooms had to have a usable window, so as he passed their doors, he paused to listen for sounds of occupancy until he found an empty one.

From what looked like an old nursery - it was as clean as the rest of the castle, but felt neglected - he went out another set of the French doors that were widely used in the castle. He wrapped the tiara's box with the covering off a side table as he passed through the room. Sure enough, a small balcony gave him access to the rooftops leading to escape. He paused before he went over the balcony railing, however, when he heard voices spilling out of the window a room above.

At first, he thought their words were being distorted by the distance, which would have been strange because they sounded like they were right by the window. Three voices, three people, all male. Flynn finally realized that they were speaking in a foreign language. Based on the tone, the adults were frustrated and angry at something; the younger sounding voice was persuasive.

Flynn couldn't understand their conversation, and he didn't think they would spot him climbing down, so he left them behind and continued on. He tied the ends of the cloth diagonally across his chest to secure the box against his back. Hands freed, he stepped quietly across the edge of roof until he reached a place where he could get a foothold to descend to the ground.

He didn't waste his escape. The Stabbington brothers were on their own. They were caught; he wanted to stay free. Using the cover of night to get away from the castle without being noticed, Flynn left the castle and town and fled into the woods with his prize. He was far away when dawn began to lighten the sky.

ooo

Hans stumbled down the stairs and nearly ran into the two guards at the entrance to the prison cells. Before they could yell at him for being in a restricted area, he made a show of looking around with shock, followed by embarrassment. "Not - how say - cooking bath?" he asked, feigning lack of fluency with the local language. "_Sauna?" _he asked, using the word in his language. "Where find, please?"

The skinnier of the two guard tried to be helpful. "No," he said loudly, shaking his head in an exaggerated way. "No understand. You," he pointed at Hans, "go upstairs." He pointed back up the stairs. "Ask for Matron Inka. She help you."

Hans smiled like an imbecile and nodded along with the skinny guard. He didn't move from the spot.

The second guard addressed the first. "You'd better take him upstairs, Karl. The king wouldn't like to know that guests were wandering into the dungeons."

"You're right, Ambrose," the guard replied in a normal tone. "I'll be back in a minute." He turned back to Hans, and his volume went back up. "Please come with me, sir."

Hans walked behind the guard, distracting him with nonsense questions. On the stairs, Holger stepped out from around a turning, grabbed and silenced the guard. The big prince choked the guard until Karl slumped unconscious.

A minute later, Johan trod past them, heading down the stairs for his role in their plan to break the Stabbington brothers out of imprisonment. The idea had been Hans's. The arrest of his brothers, Bram and Gunnar "Stabbington" as they called themselves, couldn't have come at a better time, for him. However unwittingly, for once his brothers had helped him out. Without the need to break them out of Corona's dungeon and flee, Hans would not have had a way to convince Johan that they all needed to leave the kingdom by dawn.

Fate had given him the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. Without the Princess interfering, this time.

He heard Johan ask the guard if he had seen the younger prince. The guard's answer cut off suddenly with a muffled gurgle. Cleaning his dagger on a handkerchief, Johan came back up the stairs to wave Holger and Hans back down.

Holger dragged Karl's unconscious body down the stairs. He took one look at dead Ambrose, lying face down in a spreading puddle of dark blood. He shifted Karl's body, broke the guard's neck, and tossed him next to his fellow.

"Let's get this done," Holger said.

Hans dug around the guards' belts until he found the one that held the key to the locked door that they had guarded. He took pleasure in the musing that his plan had assigned the dirty work to his brothers. If they were caught, he could say he hadn't expected the killing.

They unlocked the door and strode as a group down the empty corridor to confirm that no other guards stood in their way. Just as Hans had discovered, the majority of guards on duty were in the town, escorting drunks home and helping clean up after a night of revelry, while the remaining ones, including the captain, were in conference with the king. This hour provided the only window opportunity to break Bram and Gunnar out. Once they saw that the corridor was clear, Johan and Holger backtracked to ready their horses.

Hans had the pleasure of turning the key in the lock of their cell. Not only would they owe him their freedom, but they would have a visual memory as a reminder.

"Would you look who's here," muttered Gunnar, scratching his sideburns. "Well, little brother, this is some reunion."

Bram just groaned as he got to his feet. His skin was pasty, and he did not look well. Gunnar took him by the arm and helped him out the cell door.

"He has fever from his eye," Gunnar explained. "How are we getting out of here without being caught again?"

"Ship's waiting," Hans explained, taking Bram's other side to assist. "Holger and Johan are with me. They're getting their horses hitched to a wagon to hide you in, right now. I'll follow with Sitron."

They managed to make their way out without being stopped. Hans couldn't believe the way his good luck held, all the way through the escape. Unnoticed and unquestioned, they left castle and town behind.

They boarded the ship, departed from the dock, and bid Corona goodbye.

ooo


	16. To Test the Limits

_It's my fault._

_It's _my_ fault._

_They died because of me. Ambrose. Karl. It's my fault. I shouldn't have thought Flynn Rider was on my side. That he wasn't a threat. _

Elsa could hardly hear the most recent report over the noise in her head of self recrimination. That, and the sound of the heavy rain hitting the windows filled her hearing. A rainstorm had rolled in during the morning. It washed away clues, making chances of catching the escaped prisoners ever more slim.

_I didn't take him seriously, even knowing he's an outlaw. He set them free. Maybe he didn't… kill… Karl and Ambrose… maybe it was the red-headed men, after he helped them escape. But he is culpable, and I am guilty, too._

She couldn't feel anything but a barrier of insulating cold between her and everything else. She sat, perfectly still, watching Captain Kempf's mouth move. His was the latest news, and yet the same: still no sign of the escapees. It was as if they had vanished. Elsa was the only one who knew that Flynn Rider, known associate of the Stabbington Brothers, had been in the castle. No one knew that she had let Flynn go without raising the alarm.

_And good men are dead because of me, _she thought.

The escape had happened during a slight lull in security, when only two guards stood guard over the bandits. The guard were unaccustomed to having dangerous criminals held captive, and no one anticipated that they would have an ally positioned to break them out. The level of brutality used to set them free shocked everyone.

And the tiara of the princess was missing. Stolen. King Thomas took the news like a physical blow. Elsa half-remembered that he had held it last, and that the tiara had been left out of the vault. If she had harbored any hope of Flynn's innocence before that report, it evaporated upon being told that the tiara had been stolen.

Principally addressing King Thomas, the guard captain said, "Interviews of witnesses who were in the areas surrounding the castle having been yielding the same testimony, Your Highness. They saw a dark figure in a cloak, or a shadow carrying a bundle on its back. We have two who have pointed out where they saw the figure leaving the castle. Your Highness, they saw someone climbing out of the old nursery." The captain tightened his lips, an indication of discomfort. "Rumors have already begun."

"What kind of rumors?" King Thomas asked. His tone warned seriousness.

"Rumors that dark magic has again touched Corona, Your Highness. The figure has been described as a shadow carrying away Princess Rapunzel."

"There was much carousing last night, Captain."

"Indeed, Your Highness." Elsa registered that the guard captain looked over to her, as if seeking her support. "We had many unreliable witnesses. However, these two were both servants of the castle, and sober, and both too young to know that room as the nursery of the princess."

Queen Primrose interjected. "The servants do converse among themselves," she cautioned. "The young maids may still know the empty room was the nursery."

The captain dipped his head, acknowledging the queen's statement. Still, the air felt heavy from the talk of dark magic. "If I may be bold," the captain hedged, "the fear of the people would be well addressed if the Champion could be seen assisting our investigation of this grave affair."

Elsa's gaze flickered from the captain to her uncle. King Thomas did not answer Elsa's look. "It will be taken under consideration. Thank you, Captain. You may return to your duties."

The guard captain gave a crisp bow, in spite of his injuries, and strode out of the throne room. Elsa wondered if his suffering was terrible. Even if he had kept his riding to a minimum, any riding would jolt his shoulder badly.

"Well, Elsa," King Thomas sighed, when the room emptied but for the king and the royal ladies. "It seems that not only is your wish approved, but your desire to ride with the guard is needed. While it remains your desire, and while your presence graces our kingdom, you may take your place as Corona's guardian. The stallion, Maximus, is yours, as well."

Elsa felt light-headed. She looked at her Aunt Primrose for confirmation. The solemnity of Primrose's nod told her that the subject had been well-discussed between the king and queen. Nevertheless, the final decision was due to the horrible events of the night.

Elsa carefully rose from her seat. She gave her uncle and aunt a deep curtsey. She left their presence with her head held up. She would not allow her posture to droop, or her view to fall to the floor.

She had gotten her wish, and it wasn't what she had wished for. If she had known that she was making a choice, she would have remained the frail princess locked in her room; she would have never have hoped to change the life in front of her. Yet now, more than ever, she owed all her strength to Corona.

She felt the familiar tingling crawl across her palms. Her cursed power clawed at the cage of her heart. She heard it roaring in her ears.

Flynn Rider would have no more kindness from Elsa. She would hunt him and his cohorts down, first, and see them all hanged. Then she would solve the mystery of Rapunzel's abduction. She would place the tiara upon the head of the true princess with her own hands, if the princess was still alive.

All of this, Elsa would do. She, a monster herself, would destroy the monsters who made themselves the enemies of Corona. She would turn the storm inside her against them.

ooo

"Catch me!" Anna yelled. Sven the reindeer, sitting on his haunches safely away from the water, watched her run and leap off the pier .

Kristoff stood up in the row boat and did manage to catch the girl in his arms. At ten years old, he was strong and sturdy, but he was no match for the physics of catching a girl his same age while standing on a rocking boat. As soon as Anna was in his arms, they both went overboard into the cold water, shouting in unified protest.

Anna came up sputtering. Kristoff surfaced a second after her. They bobbed in the cold water of the fjord.

Anna wiped stray hair away from her face. "I'm freezing!" she laughed. She started swimming toward the row boat.

Kristoff matched her strokes, and they reached the boat at the same time. He held it steady as she climbed in. "Hey, watch your splashing," he jokingly complained.

Anna turned around in the boat and splashed a handful of water at his face. "Who's splashing?" she teased.

"Give me a hand in." Kristoff held his hand for Anna to take.

"Oh, no. You're going to pull me in again. I can see it all over your face. You have a face that gives you away."

Kristoff made a goofy face at her. "This face?" he asked.

"I like your face," she said. She looked around to make sure that no one would see; then she leaned down and gave Kristoff's a hug. When she pulled away, she was smiling and blushing.

Kristoff let go of the side of the boat and pretended to sink under the water. He bobbed up again, on the other side of the boat, and climbed in.

He did everything with Anna. Anna, because of her ongoing competition with her absent sister, swam like a seal, so Kristoff had to become a strong swimmer, too. Learning to swim had led to getting apprenticed with a shipwright. Anna dreamed of sailing around the world, and Kristoff wanted to build the ship that would take her. Naturally, he planned to be on that trip with her.

Anna did everything with Kristoff. She liked having someone to share the fun with, and Kristoff went along with anything she wanted to do. He studied with her, learned riding and swordplay with her, and shared her secrets. That they were sweet on each other was a secret from everybody else.

Someday, Anna planned, she was going to kiss him. Probably when they got married. She hadn't told him that secret plan yet. She thought about telling her sister, but she was a little afraid someone (her parents) might see the letter. Elsa didn't have a sweetheart. Anna was ahead of her in that regard.

Kristoff picked up the oars and started rowing toward the pier. "Today is letter day, isn't it?" he asked Anna.

"Yes it is!" Anna answered. "I have my letter ready and waiting."

The boat lined up with the pier. Kristoff helped Anna step out of the boat and onto the dock. Her skirt was waterlogged. His clothes were soaked, too, but they would dry out well enough in the sun. "I have to get back to my tasks," he apologized.

"Oh, I know," said Anna. "I was just visiting you for a minute." She wrang out her skirt and squished the water from her sleeves and her hair. Her face grew bright with her smile. "Will you meet me at the dock when I bring my letter to the ship?"

"Anna. The ship is already here," Kristoff said. "The winds must have been favorable. It came in early."

"Oh!" Anna looked down at her soaked clothes. With a quick shrug and wave to Kristoff, she turned and ran off, back to Arendelle castle, to get her letter… and change as fast as she could.

She knew she would be in trouble if they saw her in her wet clothes, so she tried to avoid her parents as she ran to her room. Before her room door had finished closing behind her, she was stripping off her soggy dress. She didn't want to unlace her shoes - doing so would take too long - so she had to leave on her wet stockings. She did put on fresh underclothes, carefully stepping into them with her boots on. She grabbed her letter and an embroidered bonnet to tug over her wet hair and dashed back out.

She wasn't late to the ship. In fact, she was able to intercept the sailor who was taking other documents up to the castle and take them herself. Anna was briefly curious about the other letters, all of which were addressed to Arendelle's monarchs, as could be expected. When she brought them to her father, he was at his desk reviewing a stack of what appeared to be treaties in need of renewal. Her mother sat by the bright light of a window, taking a break to add to some needlework in a round, wooden frame.

"Thank you, Elsa," King Marcus, his attention on the paperwork in front of him, said to his youngest daughter.

Anna wasn't mad. Her father made the mistake a lot when his mind was elsewhere. Better that he wasn't noticing her wet hair and shoes, anyway. Remembering them, she started to hurry nonchalantly out of the room.

Her mother rose and looked through the newly arrived missives. She picked one up and started to break the seal. "Marcus," she said, "it's from my brother Thomas." She unfolded the paper and started to read. King Marcus looked up from his treaties.

Anna stopped before she reached to room's doorway. Curiosity pulled her back, and she slipped into a chair at the corner of the room. If her uncle, the king of Corona, had sent a letter, then he might say something about when Elsa was coming home. If not, she was still interested in the contents of that letter.

Queen Genevieve commented, after reading the greeting, "Thomas is so formal. Elsa, he says, is doing well and is happy, a great help to them, etc. Well, here, 'It will honor us to officially adopt-'"

"What?" King Marcus, startled, interrupted.

Genevieve waved away his alarm. "'officially adopt Elsa as a peacekeeper in our kingdom. By her own request, while she resides in Corona, she will ride with the royal guard.' Our Elsa?" Genevieve questioned what she had just read. "What is Thomas thinking?" She sat down next to Marcus.

Anna sat up. Her big sister had always wanted to be a castle guard, but in her letters, she said that it hadn't been allowed. Anna stuck her hand in her pocket and touched the new letter from Elsa's letter. Anna hoped that Elsa would explain everything. Anna also wondered how she was going to convince her parents to allow _her_ into _Arendelle's_ guard.

King Marcus pressed his fingers to his temple as if his head hurt. He leaned back in his chair. "Corona is a very safe place," he said.

"It may be a whim on Elsa's part. A new set of clothes. The novelty of practice drills." Queen Genevieve mused.

"We should bring her home. Perhaps," Marcus said.

"But Marcus," Genevieve protested in a low voice. "She's happy there and has friends. And Anna is…" she stopped. She looked around the room and spotted Anna sitting still in her corner. "Anna, is your hair wet? What did you get into?"

Anna quickly got up and scampered out of the room. It meant missing the rest of her parents' conversation, but she wouldn't have heard even as much as she had if they hadn't forgotten for a minute that she was listening.

She hated being stuck indoors, so she made her way outside instead of heading up to her room. In the gazebo, she sat on the railing of the wooden wall and opened Elsa's letter. It had a faint, fruity smell. Anna held it close to her nose. She wondered when her sister had started wearing cologne.

_Dear Anna,_

_I did it. _

_Max is my horse now to keep. Uncle Thomas has given permission for me to be in the guard, and since the guard captain was hurt in an accident, because I am royalty, I will be the highest ranking guard. That means that in some ways, I'll be in authority. Although, for everyday purposes, I'll delegate to the sergeants until the captain is well again._

_I have an important task here in Corona, now. I have something important that I have to do._

_Take care of yourself, do your lessons, and write back to me soon._

And that was all.

Anna flipped the letter over. Elsa's signature was on the bottom corner. The rest of the single sheet was blank. Anna couldn't believe it. Elsa never sent just one page, and never, ever wrote a letter so short. Her heart falling in disappointment and disbelief, Anna got up and went to wash the fjord water out of her still-braided hair and sneak some of her mother's lemon verbena perfume.

ooo

Later that night, Anna read Elsa's short letter again. Snuggled up in a thick blanket, she held the page up in candlelight.

As she held it up near the candle, the paper began to brown. She pulled it away, afraid it was catching on fire. But when she touched the paper, it was barely warm, and the brown marks looked… like pieces of words.

With care, Anna moved the page close to the candle, then a little closer. In seconds, the browning continued, becoming script written on the back side that had seemed blank. There was also writing on the front, spaced in between the ink. Anna held her breath, amazed at the secret writing that had been invisible on the page.

The letter now said:

_I did it. It's all my fault, and I have to make it right._

Then, after the paragraphs she had already read:

_I have an important task here in Corona, now. I have something important that I have to do. I can't fix what happened because of me. All I can do is commit myself to finding and capturing the bad people who got away because of me._

_Anna, I'm hiding this in invisible writing because this message is only for you. I trust you to find it if you read this letter by candlelight while it's still fresh. Please destroy it after you read it._

_I have to tell you about the white streak in your hair. I don't think it's right that you weren't allowed to remember. When you were little, I hurt you by mistake. You fell and hit your head. You could have died. That's why I was sent away._

_I have to stay away. I think Momma and Poppa think so, too. But it won't be a bad thing, for me. I will do my best here to make good._

_We have our letters. I always look forward to them, do you? I find that I want to tell you things that only you and I will know. We used to share secrets. We still can._

_I wrote this letter, the hidden part, in lemon juice. We have an ample supply of lemons, here. Write back to me using a brush dipped in milk. It won't smell very good once it gets to me, but that's all right. It will still be invisible once it dries. When I get your letter, I'll know you found this secret message._

_One more thing. Be wary of any royal visitors from Southern Isles. Prince Hans is a liar and very good at hiding his true nature. Since he is the youngest, I can't but expect that his brothers are any more honest. Don't say anything to Momma and Poppa unless you have to, but keep your eyes open._

_Take care of yourself, do your lessons, and write back to me soon._

_Sincerely, your sister,_

_Elsa_

Anna was crying by the end of the letter. What did Elsa mean, that she couldn't come home? Anna picked out some of the white strands in her hair and looked at them. They had always embarrassed her, but now her weird hair, she knew, was because of her sister. Now it would always remind her of Elsa.

She wiped her eyes, cheering herself up by thinking about the invisible writing. Now she would have a way to tell her sister secrets without anyone else being able to read them. She always had milk with breakfast. It would be easy to save some for writing.

She couldn't, however, bring herself to destroy the letter. Instead, she folded it up and tucked it under her pillow. In the morning, she would find a good hiding place.

ooo


	17. All That Time, Never Even Knowing

"Run fifty more with this one," Elsa instructed the printmaker. She handed over a newly made woodcut of the wanted poster for Flynn Rider. The small frown creasing between the printer's eyebrows told Elsa just what the printmaker was thinking. It was the problem of the nose. Elsa had actually stopped trying for an accurate nose months ago. Now it amused her to have Rider's image printed with absurd noses: hawked, elongated, bulbous, or crooked. She ordered the image changed out regularly, and she saw to it that a mixed assortment of prints were posted around the kingdom.

She took a stack away with her. Outdoor, five guards and Maximus waited for her. She distributed a portion of the posters to each of her men. "Let's get these out along the eastern border," she instructed. "That area is due for being refreshed. Bring back any old posters that you see. We'll have them pasted with the new reward amount and redistribute them."

"Yes, Your Highness!" the guards answered in near-unison. Even the youngest of them were still at least three years older than Elsa, but over the last months, the Champion of Corona had become the stand-in for Captain Kempf. The old captain had never recovered well from his wounded shoulder. He was taking early retirement, now, training new recruits and raising horses. It seemed to suit him. She hoped that it did.

Leadership suited Elsa. In private, she still vented her ice magic when it threatened to overwhelm her. Since making her vow to hunt down the enemies of Corona, this venting had taken the form of weapons. Her ice daggers still frightened her. Instead, she practiced with the precise creation a slim saber made of glistening, clear ice and a shield to match. She spent her spare time studying high quality swords and written works on bladesmithing. She never let her ice magic pour out freely. She wouldn't take such risks.

However, this winter was the first in memory to bring snow flurries to Corona. The coldest nights of January grew colder by twenty degrees. Although the frost of mornings burned off with the afternoon sun, since the end of autumn the rain fell as quickly-melting snowflakes more often than as rain drops.

The fashionable set embraced the change in weather with a new fad for lined hats and quilted cloaks. Trade with countries that regularly experienced deeply cold or snowy winters increased as merchant ships fulfilled the new demand for angora and other soft, warm fibers. Corona stood perfectly placed to exchange cod from Arendelle with vicuna from Stele, a neighboring country known for its inhospitable mountains, and with cashmere from the high deserts of Qamar.

While the other guards started patrol, Elsa went to follow a lead. She and Maximus trotted off to an inn on the outskirts of the town. The innkeeper had two grown daughters, and Elsa had learned that one of them had been keeping company with a young man fitting Flynn Rider's description. As a young woman herself, she hoped that she could get the innkeeper's daughter to speak more freely to her alone than she would if confronted by one of the regular guard. She slipped off her intimidating helmet before she opened the inn door.

The inn conveyed a welcome to travelers and townsfolk seeking comfort and a well-made meal. The tidy interior smelled of hearthfire and herbs. A buxom blonde maiden welcomed Elsa as soon as Elsa passed through the doorway. The girl was exceptionally pretty, rosy-cheeked and well postured. Her golden tresses were contained by a cap with a lace frill, and she wore a matching, clean apron over her wool dress. Recognition crossed her face after a moment. She dropped into a curtsey, which in turn caused a wave of dipping heads around the room as the inn's guests also bowed to Elsa.

"We're honored, Your Highness," the girl offered.

"Would you happen to be Anise?" Elsa asked.

The blonde shook her head. "I'm Bryony. My sister is in the kitchen." Her eyes went large and her face grew pale as she seemed to speculate as to why Princess Elsa would be looking for her sister. She indicated a seat near the crackling fireplace, trying to form words that didn't take shape. "I'll fetch her!" she exclaimed, turned, and rushed away.

Instead of moving toward the warmth of the fire, Elsa took a seat at an empty table by the door, next to a window with open curtains. She preferred the colder spot, and it was furthest away from others in the room. The innkeeper would be out of the inn at this time of day, another detail that might allow his daughter to converse with Elsa uncensored.

She was not made to wait long. A nervous girl, closer to marrying age than Elsa, appeared and came to the table. She dipped a wobbly curtsey and then stood waiting.

Elsa could see the girl looking over Elsa's appearance. Elsa was smartly dressed in an all-gray riding habit, a version of the guard uniform suited personally to her that rejected unflattering oxblood for a colder look. While she did not wear any jewels, gold embroidery embellished her uniform in place of armor. She wore her white hair in a coronet of braids. Still, Elsa's age must have soothed the innkeeper's daughter's nerves somewhat, because she didn't look _quite_ ready to faint.

"I'm Anise, Your Highness," she said.

"Sit down, Anise," Elsa said. The girl was a match in appearance with her sister, but with walnut brown hair instead of blonde. Elsa told herself that she should have realized, when she saw Bryony, that she was not the right girl. She was starting to think that Rider had a type; whenever she interviewed a girl associated with him, that girl inevitably had dark hair.

The girl held her hands in her lap and hunched in on herself. Elsa placed one of the Wanted posters on the table. She chose one with the most accurate of the noses. "Do you know this man, Anise?" She kept her volume low. It wouldn't help the inn's reputation if the conversation were overheard.

"I didn't know it was him. I swear it," the girl said. She squirmed and looked miserable.

"Did he ask for food, shelter?" Elsa coaxed. "Maybe assistance to travel out of the kingdom?"

"I don't remember him asking," the girl sighed. "It was just so easy to give him things. He has a look," she pleaded. "Do you know that look? When a man looks at you, and you turn to butter on a hot day? Like your knees are pudding and there's nothing in your head but spongecake?"

Elsa tightened her lips together to avoid smirking at the excessive food metaphors. She did not, in fact, know what if felt like to go giddy because someone gave her a look. She was starting to wonder if there was something wrong with her about that.

She dismissed the thought. "I understand," she lied. "Tell me what happened."

"Well…" the girl started.

They were interrupted by her sister as Bryony served a cup of bergamot-scented tea and a slice of apple tart to Elsa. The smell was heavenly. Elsa chose to ignore that Bryony hovered nearby, plainly listening in on what her sister had to say. Thankful that accepting the food might put the girls more at ease, Elsa picked up the fork and sampled the apple tart.

Anise watched her eat. Elsa notice the girl slightly relax.

"He came around during the morning. I was in the back garden collecting herbs," Anise started. "I didn't think anything of talking to him. We - my sister and I - talk to travelers all the time. I fixed him up some breakfast. And then, erhm," she trailed off, blushing.

"Did he tell you any stories, or talk about his plans?" Elsa hoped for some small detail that might hint at his hiding place.

"Oh, stories! He had some stories. He's an adventurer-." She cut herself off. She dropped her gaze into her lap. "I…" she said.

"Anise?"

"He said that every day could be an adventure. He said I was smart, and that I could be anyone I wanted," she said.

Elsa carefully put her fork down. She took a mouthful of tea to wash down the chagrin. Hadn't Flynn said much the same to her?

"But I couldn't go with him," Anise finished quietly.

"Where was he going?"

"Where his feet took him, he said." The girl looked out the window. "Someplace warm. And sunny. He said… he had been sleeping in the cold a lot."

"Any talk of companions? Other… adventurers?"

The girl shook her head. "No. That is, he was on his own. Adventuring is a lonely life. At least, I thought so. I didn't believe him when he said alone meant alone and free. A man like him isn't meant for loneliness."

"How long ago was he last with you?"

Anise colored up again. "He's been gone two days," she answered.

Elsa hid her surprise. Two days! Two days ago, this area had been thick with guards riding escort for the merchant wagons moving goods along this road from the port to the border. How had Flynn avoided being seen? How did he do it?

Bryony, growing bold, sat down beside her sister. "Is it true," she asked in a whisper, "about him being friends with sorcerers?" She seemed genuinely afraid. Her question wasn't merely for gossip.

"I'm sorry to say that it may have been true," Elsa answered. She rose up from her chair. "Is there anything else you can tell me about Flynn Rider?" she asked Anise.

The sisters stood when Elsa stood. Anise shook her head. "I'm sorry."

"If something comes to mind, don't hesitate to come to me," Elsa instructed. Disappointed, she bid the girls goodbye.

ooo

After Princess Elsa left, Bryony pulled her sister into the kitchen for a private conference. "You didn't tell her!" she accused in a whisper.

"No, I didn't tell her," Anise answered, keeping her own voice down. "Do you think I want to be locked up? It would kill Father if his daughter was condemned for treason. Anyway, I didn't know Flynn was in so much trouble."

"Didn't you? Isn't that why you hid him in a barrel of dried codfish when the castle guards came around?"

Anise wrung her hands. "He was just going to ride in the merchant wagon until things quieted," she said.

"Or maybe he stayed in that cod barrel until it was traded across the border? Did you think of that?" the blonde sister huffed. "Not to mention, by not telling the Champion everything, you might be helping dark sorcery? The Lost Princess would be our same age if she hadn't been carried off by a bad fairy, Anise. That could have been us!"

"Well, if he did leave the kingdom, then he's gone from the kingdom," Anise answered, near tears. "How would telling her change that?" She took a handful of onions out of a basket and began chopping them to use in a stew. "Flynn's free, I'm free, and no one is the worse." She let her tears run, blaming them on the onions.

ooo

A day's walk from the inn, in her tower in a hidden valley, the Lost Princess had no idea that she was no more real to girls her same age than a the victim in a fairy story. The stars that she charted, though far outside her world, were more real to Rapunzel than she was to her age mates.

The star chart was nearly completed. Before starting to paint over her sketch marks, Rapunzel triple checked her math. When the floating lights appeared again in another four lunar cycles, she would be able to concretely confirm that they were _not_ stars.

Sitting up by the little window in the roof, so that she could paint the constellations in her star chart, she kept an eye out for flakes of snow. For the first time in her memory, snow had started falling out of clouds. She hoped that snow falling into the tower would mean that the snow person would visit her again.

The snow person, Olaf, hadn't been like anything Mother had warned her about. Rapunzel thought that Olaf might be like Pascal. After all, Pascal had climbed into her tower all on his own one day and had been her friend ever since. Mother claimed to be deathly allergic to pets, but she never did find out about Pascal, who always hid from her.

She was starting to think that Mother Gothel didn't always tell Rapunzel _exactly_ the truth. About books, for example. After Mother had accidently dropped the cookbook into the stove, Rapunzel had been distraught, but she had assured Mother that she would still been able to make the recipes from memory. Then, although Mother said that books were extremely few and rare, she had shown up with a new cookbook, full of new, different recipes, the very next day. And then insisted that Rapunzel only prepare meals from the new cookbook.

She didn't love her mother any less for being less than completely truthful. After all, Rapunzel herself kept a few secrets from Mother, too, like Pascal. Like Olaf's visit.

Would it truly always be too dangerous for Rapunzel to leave the tower? Maybe Mother was not being completely truthful. After all, Mother went out into the world by herself. When Rapunzel was fully grown, like her mother, it might be possible to go out. As long as she wasn't alone.

Yes! She made herself a promise. When she was old enough, she would ask Mother to take her to somewhere where Rapunzel could see the origin of the floating lights. It was her dream to discover what they were, and if she shared her dream with someone she loved, it would be that much better.

ooo


	18. If I Have Time to Spare

A/N: Trick or Treat? I hope you agree with "Treat"! My beta reader questioned the time compression in this installment, so it's possible some of you dear readers might, too. If I'd written this part of Flynn's time over several chapters, this story would suddenly have a population explosion of OCs. We have another 4 year jump happening, too. I hope you enjoy! This update is late, so the next one will be soon.

Thank you for all your reviews. You are keeping me going!

oxo

What he thought would be a setback of a month or two turned out to be years. For nearly four years, Flynn had been rethinking his choices, choices that had left him sleeping in sheds among sacks of rutabagas more often than not. It never got warm enough in Stele to sleep outdoor. His luck with the ladies had been the worst of his life since any time after he'd started being able to grow facial hair.

Things had begun badly enough when he found out he was being blamed for the Stabbingtons' escape, too. For the first part of winter, he thought he could ride it out. The brothers would get caught again, and the heat would justly shift to them. When he went out by day, his chances of being chased by the guard were ridiculously high. He slept in his cave during the days and sought out warmer accommodations during the nights.

His social life, though, went as off kilter as the suddenly unpredictable weather in Corona. The reward on his head was so high, he realized that even the ladies might turn him in once they realized who he was. Not that anyone could recognize him by the wanted posters, with the terrible likeness of him on them. His vanity took a kick to the gut every time he saw one.

The cause of his troubles, the thing that should have put him in the warm, soft lap of luxury, still sat untouched, tucked away in a leather satchel in Flynn's forest cave. That is, unless a family of raccoons had taken up residency during Flynn's prolonged, involuntary absence. A single pearl, popped out of its setting, would have bought him comfortable passage out of the kingdom. But Flynn had never been able to bring himself to committing the damage. The most he had been able to do was to gift the box to a lady friend out of gratitude for her favors.

The last of her favors had been to hide him from the sudden arrival of the guard at her father's inn along with a herd of traders. Stuffing himself into a barrel recently emptied of salted fish delivered to the inn, he escaped the swarm of guardsmen by means of a fish merchant's wagon. Unluckily for Flynn, the wagon didn't stop until hours later at the Stele border crossing. The mounted Corona guards rode alongside the whole way.

Once it was safe to escape the cod barrel, Flynn crawled out of the stinky hiding place but stayed in the wagon until the mountain road turned toward a town. He had woken up that day wondering when his luck was going to change. By that evening, he was in a strange country with nothing but his wits, his good looks, and what he carried in his pockets. He knew maybe two or three words in the language, all for some kind of Stelese food.

Perfect, useless to him, and the cause of his bad luck, the tiara remained behind.

For four years.

In Stele, there was no such thing as chatting up a girl without the approval of her family. Lack of approval, well… families with unmarried daughters seemed to have a lot of knives to sharpen. Fathers tended to be casually busy honing blades when callers came around. After one or two of those visits, Flynn told himself that he liked being unencumbered by romance. Girls with overprotective parents were not going to be his problem.

Part of that conclusion was that he figured out pretty quickly that a particular phrase meant a girl was thinking of a permanent situation, as in marriage. If she said that she wanted him to join her family over the dinner table, she wasn't inviting him to dinner. Flynn wasn't against marriage. He just wanted it to be with someone he could _talk_ to.

His luck had not been all bad since ending up on the wrong side of Corona's border. Stele was no picnic, but Flynn was able to get by. Not by thieving: the thrill had gone out of the idea of stealing. The risk was just too high. As a foreigner, he stood out too much. Whenever he came across a Coronan Wanted poster pinned up in an area of high travel, he felt like eyes were on his back.

It turned out, however, that he had a good eye for value, and thanks to his experience with the Stabbington jobs, a recognition of collectables. He'd started by trading a bit of junk for a bit of better quality junk, learning the language as best he could. He traveled all over the mountains, making a profit from connecting stuff given away or sold cheaply with people who would buy from him, moving between settlements as a courier, as well, once he built a trustworthy reputation. He took odd jobs, and he came to grips with taking charity when kindness was offered.

The combination of the two was how he ended up telling stories to a couple of small children while their father cooked and their mother dished out food to line of customers. Flynn and the children had been put off to one side of the food stand, and Flynn's job was to keep the littles nearby and entertained. Later, he would help clean up the market stand to finish earning his meal.

Telling stories to the younger kids had been one of the good things for Flynn about the orphanage. Those stories of Flynnigan Rider had been a long time ago, though, and he stumbled along, having lost the plot on the one he was telling. The little girl was starting to sashay away, no longer listening to him struggle in Stelese, and the girl's toddler brother was following after.

"Princess Sunrise!" Flynn called out to get her attention. The little girl turned an narrowed her eyes at him with suspicion. Stelese women - even the little girl - were dark-eyed beauties with bouncing black hair. More than a few of the grown ones swooned when Flynn turned his charm on, but this little girl looked at him as if he was addled in the head.

Flynn didn't waste her moment of attention. "Have you heard the story of Princess Sunrise?"

"I don't care," the girl sing-songed.

"You don't care about the princess with your name?" Flynn asked, faking shock. He was desperately trying to remember how the story went.

Now the girl looked at him as if he were a bug. "My name is Aurora," she said, her voice dripping censure.

"That's 'sunrise' in my language," Flynn answered. "Do you know the story? It's a tale as old as time…" Flynn put everything he had into the start of the tale. He imagined the princess, Sunrise, and started describing her generous nature and clever mind, and how the evil uncle wanted to steal the kingdom. "The curse put her into a deep, deep sleep," he said, speaking slowly in low tones, "and no one could wake her up."

"The prince will wake her up," the girl declared.

"Ah, but the prince was under a curse, too!" Flynn went on. "He had been turned into a frightening beast! With sharp teeth! And big claws!"

The girl seemed to like where the story was going. Her little brother's eyes grew wide when Flynn acted out the snarling, ravaging beast. Some of the customers in line for food had also started to take notice.

"He roared!" Flynn hunched his back and growled. "He growled so loudly that Princess Sunrise woke up from her enchanted sleep! But she was scared of the beast. She was afraid of being gobbled up!"

Soon, Flynn had a crowd listening to his story of Sleeping Beauty and the Beast. He acted out parts while he told it. When he was finishing the ending, a much larger crowd was gathered at the food stall. The father of the children caught Flynn's attention and gave him a nod of approval.

His little critic was eager for another story. Flynn started telling the adventure of The Mermaid and the Magic Lamp. Some of the crowd left, but more still gathered, and the audience increased in size, causing a bottleneck in that part of the market. Flynn, starting to feel nervous about attracting so much attention, quickly wrapped up the mermaid's adventure.

"Is that all?" his charge complained.

"Well, that's part one," Flynn explained. The children's mother handed him a tankard of honey and hot water that he drank with gratitude. The gathered crowd started to disperse, though many stayed to buy food from Flynn's employers.

A girl of about fourteen lingered after the others. Arms crossed over her chest, she had been studying Flynn during the last part of his storytelling. "You're pretty good," she told Flynn, once most of the crowd was gone.

"Thanks," he answered between drinks.

"I'm going to tell my grandfather that I want you to join our family at dinner,' she stated.

Flynn nearly inhaled his honey tea. "What?" he coughed.

She turned on her heel and ran off, giving Flynn a smile over her shoulder before she was out of sight.

ooo

As it turned out, for once the girl really did just mean an invitation to eat. She came back, a half hour later, when Flynn was scrubbing out a pot with sand.

Her grandfather was a man of indeterminate age, with a curling mustachio as black and greased as his hair. He had a chest like a barrel and a handshake that felt like he could tear off Flynn's arm. "We're a family of performers," the oldtimer explained, "not all of us related by blood. Carmilla says that your storytelling would make a good addition. We've just lost our playwright. Nothing bad; she'll be back once the baby is born. But we could use your skills. If you're interested." The man considered Flynn's silence. "We share the take, but you'd have a regular place in one of the wagons as we travel."

The offer sounded good to Flynn, except for the part about performing. Performing with a traveling group was distinctly the opposite of keeping a low profile. He hated to turn the opportunity down, but he took a breath and got ready to do just that.

The girl, Carmilla, added on, "As long as you can wear the costumes or work the puppets. Justina wrote the stories, _and_ she played the masked parts. _Everyone_ works during a show."

Flynn brightened at the mention of costume and masks. "That sounds… like a fine proposal," he said with a grin.

"Excellent!" said the grandfather with a loud clap of his hands. "Come to the square tonight to meet the rest of the family and see the performances. If we all agree, we can start working on the new show over the fire at our camp, after we eat. We'll see you then."

ooo

The troop turned out to be a neat fit for Flynn. In spite of being quite a lot younger, Carmilla treated Flynn like a kid brother, instructing him with patience when she could, handing him over to someone more patient when she couldn't. A lot more went on behind a show than Flynn would ever have guessed. He learned how paint backdrops and how to work the pulleys for the backdrops; he stitched costumes; he learned to move around without falling off the stage while wearing the paper mache Beast head.

He found that he loved working together with a team to make a performance come to fruition. If a show went well, he felt elation equivalent to pulling off a daring burglary. If it went badly, he felt the same rush from a booing crowd as he did when he had first seen the name "Flynn Rider" on a Wanted poster.

It was funny, how well the gig fit into place. The traveling performances overlapped with his collectables trading and courier jobs. The regular, comfortable sleeping accommodations improved his outlook, too. He credited the better sleep with the inspiration he had after a few weeks with the performers.

The birthday of the lost princess of Corona was a week away. Flynn's plan was this: he would take the crown back. He would sneak into the castle and leave the tiara there, in the place meant to display it during the festival of lanterns, and deny culpability for everything. If he got caught sneaking the tiara back, he could still beg for mercy from the king and queen. They were good rulers, beneficent rulers that had made their kingdom prosper.

Not that he expected to be caught! He grinned, thinking of the uproar he would cause by making the tiara magically reappear for the lost princess's birthday. Then, he could say he had been innocent the whole time. He could plead wrongful accusation. They might even believe it. The only person who had actually seen him anywhere near the castle was the borrowed princess. By now, she would have gone back to her home country.

The key to his plan was being able to cross back over the border, something he hadn't been able to do during the four years that had passed since his unplanned exile began. Now, however, he had the cover of his troop and the Beast costume.

Convincing the other performers to take the show into Corona for the Lantern Festival turned out to be as easy as making the suggestion. They had already done the circuit through Stele once and didn't yet have a new show ready, so traveling further out meant that they could continue to earn coin while creating the new show. More earnings meant more money for new costumes and props.

ooo

The night before they crossed the border, after Flynn had completed the evening tasks, he sat down by the dimming campfire to try to relax enough for sleep. The wagons filled a clearing where a circle of the heavens showed above the dark conifer trees. Stele seemed to know that it was his last night in the country. Its namesake stars filled the sky without being veiled by clouds.

Flynn was not alone for long. A few of the others joined him around the fire's last light. Young Carmilla sat down beside him, a piece of parchment in her hand. She unfolded it and handed it over to Flynn.

He looked down at the woodblock print of his face with a long, warty nose.

He sighed.

He looked around at the others and saw that they all knew.

Carmilla spoke first. "Why are you going back, when this…?" she asked.

Flynn folded the Wanted poster over on itself again. "I made a mistake," he said.

"Are you going to turn yourself in?"

"You guys aren't going to turn me in for the reward money, are you?" Flynn laughed without humor. He hadn't planned on that possibility.

Carmilla shook her head. Under the edge of her kerchief, her curly locks echoed her negation. "We're not going to turn you in." She studied her hands, then looked into the fire. "After we cross into Corona, we'll say goodbye to you." She took a bag of coins from a pocket and gave it to Flynn. "Your share."

"Ah," said Flynn. "Yeah. It wouldn't be good for you guys if I'm still with the… with the family."

"You'll still be in the family," the girl said. She stood up. "Good luck to you," she said.

After a while longer, Flynn went to the wagon where he slept and packed up his bag with the few items he would take with him. They would all cross the border together before midday. After that, he would be on his own again.

For Flynn Rider, it was the end of one adventure and the start of another.

ooo


	19. What Once Was Mine

From a window, King Thomas observed the guard practicing formations. His niece Elsa, the crown princess of Arendelle, issued commands as captain of the guard. It struck him, as it sometimes still did, how perplexing that was.

He had never outright asked his sister why Arendelle left Elsa with him for so long. When Elsa had been thirteen, he had sent a formal-toned letter with language intended to incite Genevieve and Marcus to pull the girl out of Corona. The reply gave no indication that they would do so within the year that Thomas expected.

Thomas wanted what was best for Elsa. He wouldn't be happy for himself to see her leave, but he would be happy for her if it brought her greater happiness. As he saw it, she was as happy now, wearing a uniform and issuing orders, as she had ever been since arriving in Corona. Perhaps it was because a queen-to-be could not sit in idleness if an opportunity for command presented itself. Thomas was proud of his niece, whom he had helped raise into the regal young woman she now was.

He saw her look up. Her face brightened with that narrow, composed smile that she had. He smiled back, and with a nod, continued walking past the window. He had a long list of tasks to line up for the next day. As always, keeping busy on his missing daughter's birthday was his way not to lose hope for her return.

ooo

Heavy travel into Corona for the Lantern Festival meant that the border guards passed Flynn's performing company through the crossing with practiced efficiency. The troop of players had been entertaining the line as it traveled, and the performers' wagons crossed the border like a parade, Carmilla dancing with her hoops, her grandfather commanding the ponies into a festive trot, Flynn and the others running around the wagons in costume, calling out advertisement for their show. After a half-mile past the border, where the road widened and forked, Flynn and the others climbed back into the wagons. They picked up speed and rattled down the road that led more deeply into the forest.

There, Flynn left the company behind. His parting was as simple as a hop down from a wagon as they stopped to water the ponies. Flynn jogged deeper still into the forest, all the while feeling a wave of gratitude toward the soft green grass and deciduous leaves that danced in the warm air. He didn't feel as delighted with the "Wanted: Flynn Rider" posters fluttering on some of those same trees. Pulling them off the trunks as he passed them, he saw that the paper was weathered, but by maybe a few weeks, not years.

Whoever was leading the men-at-arms hadn't lightened up. That irked him. The kingdom had plenty of wealth. Couldn't they just make a new crown? Even if the Lost Princess was ever found alive, which Flynn very much doubted would ever happen, the tiara wasn't some Cinderella slipper that would magically identify her as the right girl.

He shook off the contemplation and searched for familiar landmarks to guide him to the outcropping and his hidden cave. As he drew closer, his elation from being home began to sink under the weight of dread. Even at a distance, he could see how time had worked its changes on the hill of dirt and rock.

He climbed over a fallen tree whose splayed roots blocked where the entrance of his cave would be. The tree looked like it had lost its support when part of the slope had sheared away. He climbed through the roots. The dirt all around was soft, still loose enough to dig with his hands. With the hope that he wasn't going to run into a family of sleeping skunks, he scooped dirt and weeds away from the hole that remained of the cave entrance. Rolled up, the wanted posters became a makeshift digger.

When he found his door of branches still mostly intact, he exhaled his relief. Still, he remained cautious until the sticks were out of the way. He closed and covered his eyes for a minute to get them adjusted before he risked his neck. With continuing caution, he crept in just far enough to see inside and opened his eyes in the dimness.

The cave smelled like mice and mustiness. He took a step further in. The smell of rodents was strong, and further evidence suggested that his old mattress was now a mansion for an extended mouse family. The most important of his possessions, however, waited as he had left it, wrapped in a simple, waxed leather bag. He picked up the bag and gave it an inspection. Though crudely repaired with perfunctory stitches in one corner, the bag was of quality craftsmanship, and it remained sound after its years of entombment.

He took out the tiara and simply stared at it for several minutes. He had once thought that he could buy his life with it. Now, he was counting on it.

He pulled the satchel strap across his chest and settled it with the pack on his back. After consideration, he took both bags off. The cave was still his cave, though he would have to evict the mice, and it was the only place he had to keep his worldly goods until he found somewhere that didn't smell like mouse urine. He was going to need to carry away more than one satchel, too, when he found a new home. In the meantime, he decided, he could leave everything he had brought with him from Stele except the food and clean socks. That left room in his pack to secure the satchel inside, and gave him a lighter load for when he sneaked into the castle again. He put the pack back on.

It had taken him some time to find the cave. He estimated that if he left right away, he would make it to the castle after nightfall, but not so late that passing through the town would look suspicious. The timing was good, and he had no reason to wait, so he started out, heading in the direction of the castle while still avoiding roads and anywhere people might be gathered.

He continued removing the Wanted posters. In less than a mile, he had a bundle of them, and a dilemma. If he dumped them somewhere, the wind could scatter them, defeating the purpose of taking them down to begin with. He probably was not going to need a campfire himself, so he stuffed them into his pack with plans to drop them into _someone's_ campfire later.

With so many visiting foreigners in the kingdom for the festival, even in the depth of the forest he saw people going about. He passed a woman in a rich looking cloak and garnet red dress, apparently walking alone through the woods. She gave him the once-over and a look of lascivious appreciation. Her full, brunette locks framed a youthful visage in spite of her otherwise mature appearance. He assumed that she had a dwelling or camp nearby full of other people and hurried on.

"This is ridiculous," he muttered to himself as he travelled through the forest. Not only were the noses insulting, but the portraits were badly aged-up from his sixteen-year-old self's face, at best. All of them had him making an expression either smarmy or idiotic.

His hands were full with two thick bunches of wanted posters. Some of them had sticking paste that was still moist. He knew he was losing time, every time he stopped to tear one off a tree or signpost, but now he felt compelled. He couldn't stop.

When he came upon one of the guard, walking alone glueing a new poster every hundred feet, he started to follow. He bet himself that he could steal the fresh posters right out of the guardsman's satchel without the man even knowing. Then the guard, finding his bag empty, would think he'd finished his duty and go home.

He strolled up behind the guard as the man glopped a brush across the trunk of an oak. Quieter than the breezes of summer, he emptied the guard's bag of every last Wanted poster. The guard suddenly sneezed.

"Gesundheit," Flynn said. "Hayfever?"

The guard nodded, turning. "Thanks." He started to turn back but did a double-take.

Flynn looked at the image at the top of the stack. "Aw, come on! This looks you drew a mustache on the face of a kid still in short pants! Not to mention that his nose has an actual twig growing off the end!"

The guard stared at Flynn, then his eyes widened at the stack of posters in Flynn's hands. His mouth started to open in a yell.

Flynn tucked the posters under his arm and started running.

ooo

Elsa's long day was far from over. Any other time, she might have considered twelve hours enough, but not on the days around Rapunzel's birthday. Seeing her aunt and uncle at this time compelled Elsa to break through her limits of endurance. She allowed the fatigued guards to go home to their families while she rode out again with the men newly on duty.

Her gratitude toward Maximus was beyond measure. After a break of a few hours in the middle of the day, he displayed enough fresh spirit to rejuvenate Elsa's strength, too. He seemed to like the tour through the woods on the lanes and trails away from the main road. Late afternoon in the woods was pleasant, she admitted. Summertime's clear skies and longer days meant that light still filtered down through the cover of leaves well past the dinner hour.

Her tired mind was drifting when a shout went out among her men. She didn't have to kick Maximus into a gallop. His ears were up, and he leapt into motion.

"Flynn Rider has been spotted!" her next-in-command called out to her as she caught up to the chasing guards.

Elsa couldn't believe it was true. Nevertheless, she charged ahead with Maximus until they rode at the front of the group. There, ahead, a running man was just disappearing over a low hill. He would never be able to outrun a horse, and certainly not _her_ horse.

As Elsa rode over the hill, someone slammed into her from the side and knocked her completely out of her saddle. She crashed through a screen of saplings and fell…

...into a suddenly appearing snowdrift that shot out of her hands.

She landed on her front and was winded by the fall, though the resilient snow prevented injury. For several minutes, she lay gasping. She struggled to sit up in the soft, dry powder. Once up, she made herself sit still until her heart rate calmed. All around her, ice encased the undergrowth, like the hard freeze after a thaw.

Holding her arm out, she focused on her empty hand. She closed her eyes until all the cold around her had concentrated as a weight against her palm. She waited another half-minute, then opened her eyes and stood up with the ice sword in hand.

ooo

"More white paint," Rapunzel sighed to Pascal. After the fight with Mother, Rapunzel had asked for the most inconvenient thing she knew, a last effort to make Mother reconsider her opposition to an excursion to see the floating lights. Clearly put out by the request, Mother had still chosen the three-day journey, on her own, to get the paint. "And now I'm going to spend my birthday alone," Rapunzel mourned.

Laying down on Mother's bed, she indulged her sadness for just a few minutes longer. It was easier to be sad about being alone than to be shaken by the way Mother had shouted. _Never_ leave the tower? She had never said "never" before. It had always been, "When you're older, we'll see." Rapunzel had been waiting for… well, waiting for her life to begin for what felt like forever. Another year, another disappointment in not knowing what the floating lights on her birthday meant, might be bearable only with the hope of "someday."

"What am I going to do, Pascal?" she asked the chameleon. "I can't just leave." Pascal gave her an odd look. "Can I?" she asked. "It's too dangerous," she answered herself, sitting up. "I mean, if anyone saw me. But what if I wore a cloak, like Mother, to cover up my hair? What if I could just get a better view of the lights? If I could see the origin? I could be back tomorrow night after that, and Mother will be gone for three days; she wouldn't have to know."

Rapunzel was scaring herself. She knew it was dangerous, but she wanted to do it. Her mind ticked away rebuttals to every warning story she remembered Mother telling. Not sound, reasoned out rebuttals. Mostly the question, "But what if I'm careful?"

She knew she was past the point of turning back when she left Mother Gothel's room, went into the kitchen, and began packing food into a woven basket. She had made the basket for Mother to wear on her back, as was more practical, but Mother continued to prefer the dainty one she carried over her arm.

She was deep in contemplation over how many apples to put in when she heard sounds coming from outside the tower. Thinking it was her mother, coming back after a change a mind, she ran to the window to start sending down her hair. She quickly pulled her head back in and hid behind the curtain.

Someone was climbing up the side of the tower, and that someone wasn't Mother. She had never ever seen anyone _except_ Mother. The sounds were becoming louder: grunts and panting breaths as the person scaled the wall, using the niches in the masonry for handholds and footholds.

She looked at Pascal. Maybe the person was some kind of chameleon, too.

She was supposed to be safe in the tower, but this person was going to climb in. She inched away from her hiding place. She looked around the room for something to use to protect herself. The iron skillet hanging above the stove seemed to be the heaviest object that she could wield with the most control. She took it down off its hook and crept back to the window, planning to hit the person on the top of his head as soon as he reached the window and before he could pull himself in. Knocked on his head, he would fall off the tower.

Even killing the stinging bugs that sometimes flew in made her feel sick. Her heart was thundering. As she heard the person nearly at the window sill, she lost confidence and lost her opportunity. She shrank back further against the wall behind the post. She bundled up her hair against herself and tried not to make any noise.

ooo


	20. I'm Getting What I'm Dreaming Of

Dirty boots crunched against her clean stone floor. "Wow," the man said as he looked at the contents of the room. He would have seen her if he turned a full circle; instead, he reached for some small objects belonging to Mother that were on a table. He picked up a decorative box and studied the enamel. Rapunzel had often done the same, but in her case, with a longing to try her hand at enameling.

He shrugged the pack off his back. He didn't take the enameled box, however. When he reached for the hairbrush, which had strands of her magic hair on the bristles, she gripped the iron skillet tighter. He _was_ after her magic hair!

She saw him begin to look around. She brought the skillet up and swung it at the back of his head, where it connected with a thud and knocked him to the floor.

"Owww!" the person said, writhing in evident pain while trying to scramble away from Rapunzel.

She froze with the skillet raised. She had expected the blow to knock him out. He crawled away to the window but stopped there, looking from the window to her with a pained expression and holding a hand against the back of his head.

"I mean you no ill, fair lady," he gasped.

She stepped back but pointed the iron pan at him. His teeth did not seem to be pointed. At least, none except his cuspids, the same as her teeth and Mother's. Still, she resisted squirming under his gaze. "Who are you? How did you find me?" she interrogated.

"I know not who you are, nor how I came to find you…" he started.

Mother would chastise her for interrupting, but this person wasn't Mother. "That's not what I asked!" Her voice went sharp at the end because of her near panic. "Who are you?" she shouted.

He tried to stand up, but only got as far as sitting firmly against the wall. "The name's Flynn Rider," he answered.

"Tell me, Flynn Rider: _who else knows my location?_" She menaced him with the heavy skillet.

Instead of reacting with increased respect, he waved his hands at her and said, "Look, Blondie. Here's the situation. I wasn't looking for you. I saw your tower. It looked abandoned-" His eyes went to his pack, abandoned on the floor by Rapunzel's bare foot. "Uh, if you could toss by bag over to me, I'll be out of your hair."

"What do you want with my hair? To cut it? Sell it?" she demanded.

"What?" Flynn Rider asked. "No, I don't want to do anything with your hair. You can keep your hair. All of it," he noted, looking over her tresses spilled across the floor. "Give me my bag, and I'll be on my way." He slowly stood. He groaned and reached for his head again. "In a few minutes. You could have killed me, hitting me with that thing, you know," he complained.

The wheels of Rapunzel's mind spun. If Flynn Rider could find her tower without trying, what would keep thugs and ruffians from doing the same? How was inside her tower any more safe than the outside?

Flynn seemed to be a strong person. If he wasn't a threat, he might be an ally. She glanced down at his pack, then gave it a kick to send it to the other side of the room behind her. She walked backward, saying, "I'll make you a deal. Do you know what these," without turning, she grabbed the drapes over her painting of the floating lights and pulled them over to reveal the image, "are?"

"You mean the lantern thing that they do for the princess?" Flynn asked. "That's tomorrow night."

Lanterns! Rapunzel felt a rush of elation. She hadn't doubted that they were not stars, but lanterns, flying lanterns, had never occurred to her. How did they float? She had to know! "Well, if you act as my guide to these lanterns," she said, already feeling excitement at the plan, "and bring me safely home again, then, and only then will I give you your precious bag."

"No can do," he answered with an exhale. "What kind of deal is that?"

"One that keeps you alive," Rapunzel bluffed, again threatening with the pan. "I can safely lower you down out of the tower with my… methods. But if you don't take my deal, and you try to take your bag with trickery or force, you'll regret it. That crumbling plaster might not hold up to your weight, twice. Imagine how much harder climbing down will be when I pour boiling water out that window?"

His eyes widened. "There has to be another way out of here," he said.

"Nope," Rapunzel answered. "It's my way, or nothing. I shouldn't even let you go, now that you've seen me. But if you give me a reason to trust you, we can come to a mutually beneficial arrangement."

Flynn lurched forward. "That tiara is worth my life," he blurted out. "Hand it over, Goldie!"

"No!" Rapunzel yelped. She grabbed the pack and used her hair to swing up to the beam in the ceiling, pulling the pack up with her. "Take my deal, or leave without it!"

"That's not a deal, Honey. That's extortion," Flynn glowered. He walked over to the middle of the room and pulled up a chair. Positioning it to face Rapunzel, he sat down and crossed his arms. Then he uncrossed his arms, crossed his legs, and settled back as if relaxed. "Look, I think we got off on the wrong foot. You tried to break my skull, but OK, I surprised you. Why don't you come down here, and we can talk?" he asked, his voice gentle and friendly.

Rapunzel, accustomed to mercurial moods because of Mother Gothel, hesitated only a short while before descending on a length of her hair. She left the pack out of Flynn's reach. "We can talk," she said.

Flynn gave her a look she didn't understand. He tipped his chin down, puckered his lips, and looked up at her in a winsome way. She peered at him, trying to understand his expression.

"This is kind of an off day for me," he mumbled. "This doesn't usually happen." His expression relaxed and he leaned over with his hands in his hair. "OK, fine. You want to see the lanterns. I'll take you, but we have to leave right now."

"And bring me home safely," Rapunzel reminded him.

He nodded. "So get my pack and let's get going." He stuck his arm straight out with his hand flat and vertical to the floor.

Rapunzel looked at him wordlessly, uncertain what he meant. Flynn was confusing. Rapunzel wondered if the world outside was going to have even more confusing things for her.

Flynn still had his hand out in that stiff position. "Well," he said, "are we going to shake on it to seal the deal?"

"Oh!" Rapunzel switched the skillet to her left hand. She reached her right hand out. Flynn leaned in and grasped her hand, moved it up and down once, then let her hand go.

He stood up. "So how do you leave this place?" he asked.

His hand had been warm and rough with callous. She had felt the strength in it, the solid muscle and tendon and bone. Her hand was small by comparison, but it hadn't felt weak in his grip. She wanted another handshake.

"Blondie?"

"Oh. Um," she responded. She felt her face grow warm. She turned away and took Mother's short cloak off the hook and clasped it on. Grabbing the food basket, she secured it to her back under the cloak. Then with a whip of her hair, she looped Flynn's pack into her arms. She cast a loop of hair over the pulley outside the window that she used to pull Mother up and lower her down. Flynn strolled over.

"Stand in the loop," she said to Flynn, "and I'll lower you down."

"Stand in the loop of your hair," he repeated.

"Yes."

"And you'll lower me down. With your hair," he said.

"That's right."

"I don't think so," he answered.

"But-"

"No no no no no," he said, backing away from her. He leaned out the window. "That really is a long way down," he commented.

Perplexed by his resistance, Rapunzel was going to say something reassuring, but Flynn started run-walking around the room, tapping on the floors and walls. He cracked the door open to Mother Gothel's room, but shut the door again before Rapunzel had to admonish him. After a second pass across the floor, he stopped at one of the tiles, rapping at it in several places. He gave her a look of recrimination before he started to pry at the edge of the tile. He took the little shovel from the fireplace and used it to wedge the tile up off the floor, revealing a small hinged door below. This he also opened. A ladder dropped into darkness.

"Get a lamp. We'll go this way," he said to her with a smug expression.

"I… didn't know that was there," Rapunzel said. When she thought about it, though, it made sense. How else could Mother have come and gone when Rapunzel was too small to lift her via the window? "We don't use that way."

Flynn tested the first few rungs of the ladder. "It's sound," he said.

Rapunzel stared at the hole in the floor of her tower room. She felt her heart suddenly booming in her chest. She watched as Flynn came back up, searched around and found the lantern that Mother used, lit the candle using a thin stick of kindling and the banked fire in the oven, and stood again by the trap door, waiting for her.

Rapunzel lifted her eyes to the painting on her wall. It was her dream to see the lights - the lanterns. All she had to do to start making her dream come true was to take a step toward the exit. "You go first," she said to Flynn in a tiny voice.

"You're not afraid of the dark, are you?" he joked. Taking the lantern, he started down.

She picked up his pack and realized that she would have trouble climbing down with it. However, she couldn't just give it to him now, or how could she assure that he didn't run off ahead once he had his bag?

She opened it up and quickly rummaged through it. He'd said something about a tiara being important to him. There was a large circle thing that wasn't one of the objects - food, socks - that she recognized. Deciding that it must be the tiara, she took it from Flynn's pack and hid it in her own.

When she went to the trap door, she saw that Flynn was waiting at the base of the ladder, about eight feet down. "I'm going to pass down your bag," she told him. "Remember our deal. I want to trust you."

"Hey, I'm trusting you, too, Blondie," he called up. He sounded defensive.

"When I make a promise," Rapunzel told him as she climbed down, "I never, ever break it." She got to the bottom rung and stepped down to the unfamiliar floor. "Ever." She thought about how she was leaving the tower. She had never made a promise not to leave; she had simply obeyed Mother's wishes. When she thought about it, though, Mother had never said, even today, that she wanted Rapunzel to stay in the tower. No, she had said, as a statement of fact, that Rapunzel would not leave, ever.

Mother was wrong. She was wrong about the tower being safe from anyone finding Rapunzel. She was wrong about all men being ruffians and blackguards. Flynn seemed nice enough. He didn't treat her like a freak because of her very long hair. He didn't laugh at her for being clumsy or chubby. What else might Mother be wrong about?

"It's stairs the rest of the way down," Flynn said.

Rapunzel looked around. This level below the trap door was another room, much like the central room that she had known all her life. The walls were line with dusty, empty shelves. An empty crate stood against one wall. Flynn stood by stairs descending further. She followed his boot tracks in the dust to join him. They proceeded down together by the light of the lamp.

The stairs continued in a downward spiral through more levels, each empty, some partitioned into rooms with a small central hallway between them that Rapunzel and Flynn had to cross to get to the next stairs down. When they got to these, Flynn tapped the floor to find the supporting beam, then walk carefully over that spot, in case the floor had rotten from disuse. Everything was coated with a dry dust that they were careful not to stir up overmuch. Some levels had narrow windows that had been filled with brick or stones.

Rapunzel wished that she had known about the rest of the tower. She could have explored every corner of it, cleaning everything so it glowed. So many surfaces to paint on, and they had been hidden from her. She could have made some of the cheeses that required a cool, undisturbed place to age.

Finally, they reached the final stair. Flynn went right to the outline of a door. Rapunzel lingered at that last step. She took the lamp from Flynn so that he could work at opening the door. It was bolted shut by a board across it. He removed it easily; in spite of its weight, it had shrunk and split, and sat loosely. Flynn pulled on the door, using his weight to get the rusted hinges to release.

Behind the door, the arch of the doorway had been sealed with stones and mortar. Rapunzel handed Flynn her frying pan. He took a swing at the blockage.

Sunlight spilled in as several of the stones crumbled. The pieces fell back into the tower, so Flynn kicked them aside. He pushed a hand through the new hole, letting in more sunlight by pushing aside the rooty underside of vines.

"Cover your eyes, Blondie," he said with a grin. Using her pan, he pounded through the barrier with his eyes shut against the dust and rock shards. Rapunzel used the hood of her cloak to protect her face. They both began coughing; Flynn continued removing the blockage in the doorway.

He offered her a hand to step over the broken pieces. Eagerly, she took his hand again. It already felt familiar to her.

She pushed aside a resistant curtain of climbing morning glory and honeysuckle growing tangled over the tower's outer surface. Squeezing through, she took her first step out of the tower.

The ground around the doorway was mud. It squished between her toes, making her grin. Immediately, she broke into a run across the green, soft grass. She kicked up dandelion fluff, the little spinners catching the breezes to their own freedom.

Outside was so bright! So open! It was like being on top of the roof, but with the freedom to run. She ran. She ran all the way to the brook, the one she could only see through one of the windows in the tower, and splashed into it. Her muddy, bare feet washed clean. The current felt amazing! She did a slow turn around, taking in the wide, wide world around her. It made her dizzy, trying to take it all in.

Flynn was already jogging away from the tower. Feeling glad she had kept his tiara, she took a last look at her tower, then ran to catch up with him.

ooo


	21. Can't Hold It Back Anymore

Elsa tramped through the woods. Her men must have gone in a different direction, chasing Rider, because she could no longer hear them. She was alone in the woods. Maximus would not lose Flynn's trail to come back for her just yet.

Snow still clung to her chest and skirt. Regardless of the temperature of the day, the snow would not melt until she dismissed it. With her ice sword still in hand, she was unable to make all of it vanish. Instead, a residue of fine ice crystals shimmered over her dress, making her practical riding uniform look more like a party gown. She felt absurd, hiking through the woods in a glittery dress, holding a bare sword.

She was about to will the sword away but reconsidered. She was alone in the forest. Though it had been many years ago, she easily recalled the incident of being nearly abducted, the feeling of helplessness, and how her ice had escaped control. No, until she was closer to reuniting with her guardsmen, she decided that the sword was a sensible precaution.

Coming out into a small clearing, she saw one of the Flynn Rider posters and walked up to it. She reached out with her free hand and covered up the pig snout nose. Could it really have been Flynn Rider, she wondered, that they were chasing? After all these years, without a single sighting, how was it that he would appear now, to be caught so easily? Some word had reached Corona about the Stabbington Brothers, or at least, two men matching their description closely, being seen in distant lands. Yet no word had come regarding Rider. He had not been seen in the company of the red-haired bandits.

Before being unhorsed, she had seen a brown-haired man, in a blue leather vest, with a white shirt and commonly colored trousers. His stature would match Flynn's for his age now, but that was not distinctive.

What were the chances, she wondered. Once he had disappeared, she despaired that he had sold the jewels of the tiara for a life of riches and anonymity far from Corona. Her primary drive had been, instead, in searching for any clues about the lost Princess Rapunzel. Under the guise of a census, Elsa instigated a house-by-house search of the kingdom for any person matching her cousin's age, to no avail. The few young women who had shown any possibility of resemblance had been verified as children of their known parents.

The last four years for Elsa had been… strange. They had flown by, days blending into each other, and hardly felt like so long. If not for Anna's letters, she would not have had anything to mark any week apart from the one before or after. Elsa knew that she had grown older, filling out in all dimensions as a woman, but when she looked in her mirror all she saw was herself. No different - just Elsa. Elsa, who could not go home. Elsa, endeavoring to spell eternity in exile. Elsa, always standing on the edge of the ravine.

Anna's letters sustained her. When Elsa saw the banner of Arendelle flying from a ship coming into port, her spirits billowed like the sails. Anna continually surprised her. It was Anna who declared that they must encrypt their letters to each other with a cipher known only to them, which was very clever, Elsa thought, albeit redundant with Anna burning Elsa's letters. Ann could write and read the encryption as easily as a natural language. Elsa was not as adept, but she was pleased that she no longer had to bear the rancid milk smell of an invisible letter from her sister.

Her difficulty with the encryption may have been in part because she regularly found it difficult to write anything at all. She felt that she blathered. Anna, at least, didn't seem to mind Elsa's dull repetitions.

She would have something of note to write to her sister, if Flynn Rider was in custody by the day's end. In a mere few hours, Corona's most wanted could be in irons. Elsa sighted signs of the King's Road near and headed toward that main thoroughfare at a brisk pace.

Rounding a boulder, she nearly ran into another woman. The hood of the woman's slate grey cloak fell back, revealing a luxury of black curls. She seemed equally startled by Elsa. Her gaze moved to the silvery ice sword that Elsa held, then quickly back up to Elsa's face.

"Pardon me," Elsa greeted.

"No, it's fine," the woman said. The way she clutched her basket indicated suppressed alarm.

"Good day to you." Elsa made the effort to smile, then continued on her way. She glanced back and saw that the tall woman had proceeded on her own path. Somewhat embarrassed by the encounter, Elsa decided to take one of the narrow forest lanes instead of walking out onto the road. With no return of Maximus yet, she considered that she might have a long walk ahead of her back to the castle.

ooo

Flynn saw how the sky was beginning to show the colors of sunset and cursed the time he'd lost by climbing into that tower. What should have been an acceptable hiding place for a few hours had turned out to be another mistake. Now he was saddled with a girl who went wide-eyed at the prospect of glowing lights and carried some weird kind of frog around with her. She couldn't be sweet-talked. Her lack of response to his smolder still stung his ego.

"Look at the hues!" she breathily exclaimed to him. "I love when the sky starts to go vermillion. Oh, to see the sunset filling the whole sky! Is there anywhere we can go higher? Where the horizon isn't blocked?"

"We're kind of in a forest, Blondie," he answered. "As in, trees everywhere."

Her big, green eyes went bigger. "Great idea!" she said.

Flynn didn't know what she meant until she started climbing one of the oaks. She used her hair like a rope, but she seemed to have the strength in her arms to do the climb even without assistance. She was soon climbing into the top branches for a treetop view. Her elated smile could have been the sun itself.

She was back down to the ground again before he recognized the opportunity to ditch her. He couldn't bring himself to just leaving her alone in the woods, though. Even if her excited squeal whenever she spotted the most ordinary things made their traveling stop every fifty paces.

Not even ten minutes after she was back on the ground and they were walking along quietly, he heard the sniffles starting. In their brief time together so far he'd watched her emotional state swing from the extremes of excitement to a self-recriminating despair several times in an hour. He tried not to look at her, but he couldn't help it. She walked along biting her lip and wiping away the big tears dripping down her cheeks.

"Hey, come on now," he said, trying to sound understanding.

"I'm sorry," she said around a hitching sob. "I just can't help thinking… Mother would be so disappointed. I keep thinking of how worried she'd be if she knew. But I… I want this so much, for myself." She raised up a smile, but it crumbled in moments. "I am a despicable human being. A selfish, awful person."

Flynn saw an opportunity. He modulated his voice to resonate with sympathy as he said, "I can't help noticing, Blondie, that you're more than a little at war with yourself." He almost lost his nerve when she turned her doe-eyed gaze his way. He should have been put off by her gullibility. Instead, he felt as if he should be standing between her and, well, men like himself.

He forged on. "But a little rebellion is part of growing up. Does your mother deserve a broken heart? No, of course not. Will it crush her soul when she finds out you broke her trust? Yes! But you've just got to do it. She'll get over it eventually."

"What? No!" Rapunzel responded in shock. "You don't know Mother. She won't. It _would_ crush her soul, if she knew I'd left home." Her walk slowed further.

Flynn turned to block Rapunzel's path. "She doesn't have to find out if we go back and patch up that door, right? I'll tell you what. I'll let you out of the deal. Let's turn around right now before it gets dark and get you home. If we pick up our pace, I could even help you with that patch. But we'd better hurry while we still have time." He put his arms on her shoulders and gently guided her around to face the way back. "It will be like we never crossed paths. Only you'll be the wiser about what _truly_ matters: being the person your mother wants you to be."

She shook off his hands. "N-no," she said, turning uncertainty into certainty. She turned back in the direction they had been traveling. "I'm doing this, now. I'm going to see those lanterns, and I'll… face the consequences after," she insisted, meeting Flynn's incredulous stare.

Flynn matched her appraisal until he started to feel like she could see right into him. Then he threw his hands up in the air to cover up looking away. "Then can we at least walk faster?" he complained.

Rapunzel put one hand on her hip. "Oh, is that the problem?" she asked pointedly.

"Yes! One of the many! The biggest one!" Flynn felt like he was throwing a tantrum, but he couldn't stop himself. "Why do we keep stopping every time you see a mushroom-"

"_Boletus edulis_," Rapunzel supplied.

"Gensundheit!" Flynn yelled. Seeing the way Rapunzel immediately shrank back into herself made him feel like a bully. He turned away and began marching away, taking long strides. If she had to jog to keep up, he thought, then so be it.

She didn't jog. She ran past him, her hair streaming behind her. He increased his speed. It felt good to stretch his legs with a normal walking stride.

"You want a race?" she called over her shoulder.

Flynn considered not accepting the challenge. Then he noticed the direction in which she was running. "Where are you going!" he shouted after her, adjusting the pack on his back and sprinting to catch up.

She was swift, but she didn't seem to have the stamina for a long run. Catching her didn't take much effort when she was leaned over catching her breath.

"Where did you think you were going, Blondie?" he asked again. "Nevermind, don't answer. From now on, let me lead, OK? Am I your guide or aren't I?"

Rapunzel waved an arm. She straightened up. "Lead away," she said, laughing while she still breathed heavily.

"What's funny?" he asked her. He tried not to pay too much attention to the way her chest heaved.

"That was fun!" she replied. "I've never been able to run so far in a straight line."

Flynn couldn't wrap his mind around the implication. "Are you saying that you never left that tower?" he asked. "How old are you?"

She pushed a lock of her hair behind her ear. "Tomorrow is my 18th birthday."

Taking her arm for a moment so that they would both start moving again, he asked, "Is that why the lantern thing is a big deal to you? Big enough to sneak away from home?"

"It's my dream," she admitted. "And I'll be back before Mother returns. Don't forget that part of our deal, to return me home safely."

"Huh," Flynn mused. "You still want to go back." He gave her a sidelong look. "Are you sure about that?"

At first, she seemed surprised at the question. She didn't answer immediately, however, and when she did answer it was in a small voice. "Yes. Of course I want to go home, again," she said.

Rapunzel's dash put them on a forest path that became familiar to Flynn after they followed it for a while. "Hey, are you hungry?" he asked.

She patted the woven pack she carried. "I brought food. Plus, we have those King Boletes I foraged. Should we find some water and make a fire?"

Flynn had not expected that. He tried again. "I'll tell you what. Over this way is a quaint little tavern. By the time we get there, we'll want to stop for some refreshment, say a mug of apple cider, and after that we can make camp and you can cook up… whatever you want to eat."

"Oh. OK," she said.

"What's the problem," Flynn asked, less of a question that a statement of irritation.

She mumbled, "No… problem."

"Alright, then, onward. This place will make an impression on you," he said, and turned their direction toward the Snuggly Duckling.

ooo


	22. Nothing Like I've Ever Known Before

Rapunzel didn't want to show Flynn that she was nervous about going to a _tavern_. But since he had suggested apple cider, not ale, maybe this was one of the things Mother had been wrong about. No, she wouldn't think about Mother's upsetting story about what happened in taverns. She still had her frying pan – if he suddenly became untrustworthy - strapped to the basket on her back.

He wasn't grabby, like Mother claimed men were. He _had_ grabbed her by her shoulders, and then again by her arm, and he had let go without her needing to struggle or scream. She would have liked it, actually, if he had held onto her longer. She couldn't imagine Flynn doing the brutal things that Mother said men did.

Still, she couldn't doubt the truth of the stories Mother told. Her mother had no reason to lie.

On the other hand, Rapunzel felt that the last few hours since spotting Flynn climbing the tower were life as she was meant to live it. She was done with wondering and waiting. For the last few hours, she had been exploring and moving forward. And the world was amazing! Not even a day from her tower, she had identified many plants that she had only seen in her books and seen many more that she longed to study further. Not just plants, either. So many more birds and other animals lived in the world than she had even imagined. They flit through the air, or scurried through the bushes, or ran up the trees making scolding noises.

Flynn didn't seem to understand just how wonderful the world around him was. She almost wanted to shake him for taking it all for granted. But then, maybe he was just accustomed to it. He had had freedom his whole life.

She wondered about Flynn, too. She could tell that he was still not happy about the bargain they'd struck. At first, when she noticed him being anxious, she thought he was nervous because the forest was dangerous. Yet as they walked along - or for that glorious minute, raced - she got the feeling that it wasn't the forest, but something on his mind. Traveling with nothing but food for one or two light meals, socks, and the tiara thing seemed odd. She wished she could take the tiara out of her bag and study it more closely.

Thinking of it made her feel guilty about hiding it with her own things. Flynn hadn't tried to run off and leave her behind. She thought about what he had said, about how going against Mother's rules was a necessary part of growing up. Rapunzel knew she wasn't a child anymore. She had the evidence of their dress dummy to make her aware of her body's changes as she had grown, and to compare them to Mother's form. She was her own primary model for drawings and paintings, too. With not enough else to do all day, she had spent many hours in front of her mother's full length mirror, examining her own shape.

She knew, too, that she was her own person. She had her own thoughts, her own dreams. Her mind understood more than it had when she was a child, or even when she first started to become a woman, and not simply because her learning increased. It wasn't only knowledge that advanced with time; understanding grew with age.

What Flynn said, though, implied that there was more to growing up than body and mind. Maybe rebelling, as he'd said, was a way of making one's own place in the world. Maybe it was a differentiation of spirit that allowed each individual to thrive.

Could it be, she pondered, that challenging authority was less about going against that authority - Mother, in Rapunzel's case - than about being recognized as a potential authority herself? That by going against Mother's rules, she would be forcing Mother to recognize her as an adult, because only another adult could be a real force of challenge? Flynn said it would crush Mother's soul to know Rapunzel had disobeyed, but Rapunzel felt that if she had obeyed, it was her own soul that would have been crushed.

Like two weights on a balance, if each of their desires were measured against each other, they would at least weigh as equal. Rapunzel thought that her dream, at least at this point, would outweigh Mother's worries once Rapunzel could show that she _was_ able to look out for herself. Mother would have to acknowledge the fact of Rapunzel's maturity.

When the sign of the The Snuggly Duckling came into view, Rapunzel felt more confident about having trusted Flynn. It didn't have a name with a body part, such as "The King's Head," and that itself was a distinction from the stories Mother Gothel told to Rapunzel. She could see a structure that she supposed was the tavern, down the hill at the end of the lane.

Because she had been thinking of Mother Gothel, for the first moment when she saw a person with black, curly hair shadowed in the trees along the lane, she didn't react. Then her mind caught up with what she was seeing. Panicking, she put both hands on Flynn's arm and pulled him off the road to hide behind a wide tree trunk. If she kept her grip on his muscular limb longer than strictly necessary, she chose to blame it on her fear of being seen. Pascal crouched further back under her cloak and pressed himself against her shoulder.

Flynn, unfortunately, was not as helpful. Not only did he not hide, he waved to the person in the trees.

Rapunzel understood her mistake when the woman stepped out of the shade and approached. "Flynn," she called out. She did have thick, black, curly hair, but she was shorter and much younger than Mother. Rapunzel liked the bright colors and layered skirts of the girl's dress.

"Carmilla," Flynn greeted in return. He looked both happy and apologetic.

"Who is this?" she asked. She extended a hand with an open palm toward Rapunzel. Her shiny bracelets jingled. "Hello. I am Carmilla Masca." There was a quality to the way she pronounced her words that interested Rapunzel.

Rapunzel put her hand into the girls and tried to shake it as she had learned from Flynn. "I'm Rapunzel." Carmilla gave her hand a light squeeze and then let go.

"Flynn, I wish I could say I was glad to see you," Carmilla said. With a glance at Rapunzel, she shook her head. "I am glad to see you, but I did not think it would be so soon."

Flynn looked like he wanted to say something more, but didn't have the words. "Well," he said instead, "we'll be on our way to The Snuggly Duckling."

"Then we are going the same way," Carmilla said. "I am heading back to the wagons now. Look, I found strawberries." She opened the flap of the satchel she carried.

"They look delicious," Rapunzel complimented.

"Right. Delicious." Flynn's odd discomfort appeared to have increased.

"Shall we walk?" Carmilla invited. With a bright smile towards Rapunzel, she started down the hill.

Rapunzel sneaked glances at Flynn. He definitely seemed perturbed about something. However, his attitude only lasted until they walked through the tavern's front door. He cheered up right away.

Rapunzel couldn't share his cheer. She froze at the doorway. So many people! And a wall of smell, undefinable stink, rolled out to her nose. She turned into Flynn and buried her face against his chest.

"You smell that?" Flynn murmured down to her in gleeful tones. "That's man smell."

Rapunzel agreed, but she was filling her nose with Flynn's male scent. Unlike the tavern, he had a good smell to her. Like fresh baking, it made her want to take in large breaths of it.

"Overall, it just smells like the color brown," he commented. "Aw, now don't be shy. Let's get a table."

Carmilla leaned toward Rapunzel. "It will be OK. You stop smelling it after a few minutes," she confided. "Flynn, come meet the new members to the family. Raiponsel, you come, too."

Rapunzel saw the girl go toward the kitchen and hand the satchel of strawberries off to a big man wearing mitts on his hands. Carmilla came back and indicated that they should follow her into the central room. Rapunzel gathered up her hair and started down the steps along with Flynn. The end of her hair still trailed. One of the mean looking men touched it as she passed, which felt discomforting and unwelcome, but she couldn't think of how to do anything about it.

"That's a _lot_ of hair," he said.

"She's growing it out," Flynn quipped.

For the minute after he joked, Rapunzel hated Flynn a little bit. She had to remind herself that Flynn was her guide, not her protector. She thought they were friends, but after all, they had only known each other a few hours.

Carmilla joined a large group conversing and drinking together, many of whom had her same coloring and features. She tapped one of the fellows on the shoulder so that he would make room for her on the bench. When he got up, Carmilla gestured for Rapunzel to share the seat. Out of good manners, Rapunzel took it. She sat between Carmilla and a broad-chested man who had his face painted white like a mask. Flynn stood behind Rapunzel and rested his hands on the top of her shoulders.

"This is Ulf. He does pantomime. We have a new puppeteer, too. Fang, on the end," she said to Flynn. To Rapunzel, she introduced everyone else.

Flynn excused himself to get mugs of cider and stepped away from the group at the table.

Rapunzel's interest grew with the introduction of each person's talent. She hoped for a chance to mention her own skills in dance, song, and ventriloquy, but she lost her nerve when an opportunity seemed to appear. She could almost hear Mother's laugh, the way she would remind Rapunzel that what she did was _dabbling_ and just a _hobby._ Rapunzel wasn't trying to compare herself to professionals. She only wanted to share in the conversation.

A better opportunity to mention her skills came up when someone at a nearby table complained about the gloppy stew he had been served. When it looked like a violent fight was about to start between the rough customer and the mean looking cook, Rapunzel felt Pascal prod her to get her attention. The little chameleon gestured with his eyes at Rapunzel.

She turned around in her seat. The beefy man who didn't like his food was beginning to stand, but he wouldn't be able to compete with the giant of a cook, who had the extra advantage of a helmet and leather armor.

"Excuse me," Rapunzel interjected before the fight escalated further. She had to raise her voice over the growling and try again. "Excuse me, gentlemen?" She made herself get up from the table. "Can I help?"

"Nothing can make this slop fit for anything but pigs!" the tattooed customer retorted. The cook answered with a muffled response that sounded like a threat at the tavern's guest. The helmeted cook grabbed the other man by the throat.

"Wait!" Rapunzel shouted. "I-I cook. Could I taste it?"

The cook grabbed the bowl with his free, mitted hand and handed it to Rapunzel. He handed her a spoon. Tentatively, she took put a spoonful to her lips. It was greasy, tepid, and bland, and all over a grayish brown. She could see why the customer didn't want to eat it. At the same time, she could see that the cook's feelings were hurt by the cruel critique of his cooking. Rapunzel knew how that felt.

"You know," she said sweetly, "I picked some herbs on the way here that I think would go well in this stew. Would you mind if I added in some?" She smiled encouragement at the cook.

He lowered the choking man back to the floor and let him go. After a moment, he nodded at Rapunzel. Then he started back to the kitchen. Rapunzel followed, taking the bowl of stew and her bag with her.

She did her best not shudder at the state of the kitchen. The floor, under her bare feet, felt like it hadn't been mopped or even swept in a long time. Next to the cookfire, a heavy stew pot hung on an iron hook. The unidentifiable contents of the stew could have been any kind of meat mixed with some kind of root vegetables. She had thought she tasted legumes and possibly barley. Most probably, it was a mix of whatever was at hand, all put in together and left to boil down into glop. The top surface of the contents were congealed and gray; the bottom of the pot showed scorch marks. "May I use this counter?" she asked, spotting the one clean surface.

The cook shrugged, so Rapunzel took that as a sign to proceed. She chopped up some of her freshly picked peppergrass, wild onion, and ramps. Rosemary would also be a savior to the stew. After a bit of thought, she sacrificed one of the bigger King Bolete mushrooms, which was getting a bit bruised from travel.

She pushed the heavy stew pot back closer to the flame to get it back to boiling, but before it got there, she needed to deal with the excessive fat coating the top. She turned to the cook. He was inspecting the seasoning that she had prepared to fix the stew.

"Do you have any dried up bread?" she asked. After he surprised her with a basket of bread pieces, all neatly cubed, she sprinkled some in a layer over the top of the stew. They would soak up most of the grease and the gray skin caused by over-boiling the broth. In the meantime, she scrubbed out a crusty skillet - her own was in service as a weapon at the ready, not a cooking pan - to use for the soaked bread. With a little milk and whisked egg stirred in, it would bake up into a kind of gravy-and-bread savory. She put the filled skillet over the cookfire and began to stir her seasonings into the stew. She added a cup of fresh water to break up the mass, and as bones or stems came up when she stirred, she plucked them out of the cooking.

Looking around the kitchen, she noticed the strawberries that Carmilla had brought in. A dozen of them had been washed, sliced, and arranged so that each fanned outward from the stems. The rest had been stemmed and cored. Rapunzel was glad to know that they hadn't ended up in the stew.

The cook seemed to notice her looking at the strawberries. Diffidently, he picked up the bowl, added a splash of something from a tiny bottle, and began to mash the berries into a puree. While Rapunzel continued to attend the stew, she watched him add in buttermilk, then wisk the mixture into a light froth. As he went along, he seemed to lose himself into the process, forgetting that Rapunzel watched.

On the clean piece of counter, he had a bowl ready with flour and another bowl with sugar and butter. Taking turns, he combined the contents of the three vessels until he had a smooth, pink batter, that he then poured off into a cupcake pan. He opened the heavy doors of the oven and put the pan to bake.

When he was done, he looked at the patter bowl, still coated with a little of the pink batter, then at Rapunzel. He asked her a muffled question.

"I'm sorry. I can't quite hear you through your helmet."

The big man stood still for a long moment. Then he slowly lifted off his helmet. "Would you like to try the batter?" he asked, awkward and shy as he held his helmet between his mitts.

"Oh, may I?" Rapunzel responded. With a last stir of the stew, which was now bubbling in a low simmer, letting off a much nicer smell, she took a step toward the man and accepted the batter bowl. She looked at the man who had hidden his face and gave him a warm smile. "By the way, we haven't been introduced. I'm Rapunzel. Thank you for letting me use your kitchen." She ran a finger around the inside of the bowl. The taste of the batter was sublime. She closed her eyes and hummed with enjoyment.

"I like baking. I don't like cooking," the man said, his voice as gruff as his face was scarred.

"I like baking, too. What's your name?"

"Attila," the man answered.

"I'm very pleased to meet you, Attila." Rapunzel couldn't stop eating the batter out of the bowl. "You have quite a talent." She saw that he was staring at her as if he didn't know how to respond to the compliment. Suddenly shy herself, she set the batter bowl down. She turned and tasted the improved stew. She served a fresh bowl for the unhappy customer, then found a lid and covered the stew. "I think this is ready, now," she said. She moved the skillet on the fire to a place to keep it warm. "The gravy bread will make a nice stuffing or small dish if it's served hot. The stew should be stirred every now and again to keep the bottom from burning." Again, she gave Attila an encouraging smile.

Attila picked up a spoon and tentatively tasted the bowl she had served. He blinked, looked at her, and grinned. "How did you do that?" he asked.

Rapunzel shrugged. "Oh, it was just a few herbs and a little bit of know-how," she said.

"Greno can't complain, now."

"People can get very mean and picky when they are hungry," she replied, thinking of Mother Gothel. "He'll calm down after a good meal."

"You're a nice lady, Rapunzel," Attila said before donning his helmet again.

Rapunzel, happy because of the compliment, followed Attila out of the kitchen to see Greno's reaction. The man took a grudging spoonful of the stew and tasted it. Immediately, his attitude changed. He continued eating the stew quickly, obviously pleased by the meal.

"What, the food is good now?" asked a man wearing a horned helm.

"Get some yourself, Vladimir," Greno growled between spoonfuls.

Rapunzel ended up helping to dole out bowls - and mugs, when they ran out of bowls - of the stew to the rest of the people in the tavern. Nothing was left in the pot, when they were done, because of those asking for second servings. The innkeeper even came out of hiding and offered Rapunzel a complimentary tankard of small beer, which she refused. She didn't refuse the pink frosted, pink cupcake, topped with a sliced strawberry, that Attila gave her. It was even more delicious than the batter had been.

Although the folks in the tavern had frightened her when she first entered, Rapunzel now felt that she had judged them unfairly. She had a chance to talk to many of them and found out how interesting each individual was. They all had their own hopes and dreams and things they enjoyed, and when she told them about her own dream to see the lanterns, they shared their stories with her.

Vladimir, the man with the horned helmet, had a collection that fascinated Rapunzel. "What is a 'unicorn'?" she asked, after he told her about it.

"It's like a horse, but better. It has a magical horn growing from its head," he said.

Embarrassed at her lack of worldliness, Rapunzel asked, "And what is a horse?"

"You have not seen a horse?" Carmilla asked her. "A pony? No?"

"No," Rapunzel replied. "Are they wild animals?'

Carmilla giggled. "We have ponies who pull our wagons," she said.

Vladimir took a tiny figure out of his pocket. "This is a unicorn," he said with reverence.

Rapunzel looked at the ceramic unicorn. "I would love to see a real one. Or a horse," she said.

"Come," Carmilla said, patting Rapunzel's hand. "I will show you our ponies. You want to see them?"

Cheered by the prospect, but remembering Flynn's explosion about their pace, she looked around for Flynn to get his approval. "I'd love to see them."

She couldn't spot Flynn anywhere in the room. She looked around, searching for him. The last time she remembered seeing him was when he said he was getting drinks.

"Where is Flynn?" she asked, feeling confusion. "Has anyone seen my guide?"

ooo


End file.
